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Title: The women novelists

Author: R. Brimley Johnson

Release date: September 8, 2022 [eBook #68939]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMEN NOVELISTS ***





  THE

  WOMEN NOVELISTS

  BY

  R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON

  AUTHOR OF
  “TALES PROM CHAUCER” “TOWARDS RELIGION”
  “TENNYSON AND HIS POETRY”

  [Illustration]

  LONDON: 48 PALL MALL

  W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.

  GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND




Copyright 1918




I have to thank the editor and publisher of _The Athenæum_ for
permission to reprint the chapter on “Parallel Passages”; the editor
and publisher of _The Gownsman_ for permission to use “A Study in Fine
Art”; Professor Gollancz and Messrs. Chatto & Windus for permission to
reprint the section on “Cranford” which was written for an Introduction
to a reprint of that novel in “The King’s Classics.”




CONTENTS


                                                         PAGE

  INTRODUCTION                                              1
  BEFORE MISS BURNEY

  THE FIRST WOMAN NOVELIST                                  7
  FANNY BURNEY, 1752-1840

  A PICTURE OF YOUTH                                       35
  FANNY BURNEY’S “CAMILLA”

  “CECILIA” TO “SENSE AND SENSIBILITY”                     54
  WRITERS FROM 1782-1811

  A STUDY IN FINE ART                                      66
  JANE AUSTEN, 1775-1817

  A “MOST ACCOMPLISHED COQUETTE”                          105
  JANE AUSTEN’S “LADY SUSAN”

  PARALLEL PASSAGES                                       117
  JANE AUSTEN AND FANNY BURNEY

  “PERSUASION” TO “JANE EYRE”                             131
  WRITERS FROM 1818-1847

  A LONELY SOUL                                           164
  CHARLOTTE BRONTË, 1816-1855

  “JANE EYRE” TO “SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE”                179
      WRITERS FROM 1847-1858

  A PROFESSIONAL WOMAN                                    204
      GEORGE ELIOT, 1819-1880

  THE GREAT FOUR                                          226
      BURNEY, AUSTEN, BRONTË, GEORGE ELIOT

  THE WOMAN’S MAN                                         245
      AN IDEAL AND A POINT OF VIEW

  PERSONALITIES                                           263
      CHARACTER ANALYSIS AND BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINES

  CONCLUSION                                              282

  APPENDIX--LIST OF MINOR WRITERS                         293

  INDEX TO AUTHORS AND TITLES                             297




THE WOMEN NOVELISTS




INTRODUCTION


Although women wrote novels before Defoe, the father of English
fiction, or Richardson, the founder of the modern novel, we cannot
detect any peculiarly feminine elements in their work, or profitably
consider it apart from the general development of prose.

In the beginning they copied men, and saw through men’s eyes,
because--here and elsewhere--they assumed that men’s dicta and
practice in life and art were their only possible guides and examples.
Women to-day take up every form of fiction attempted by men, because
they assume that their powers are as great, their right to express
themselves equally varied.

But there was a period, covering about a hundred years, during which
women “found themselves” in fiction, and developed the art, along
lines of their own, more or less independently. This century may
conveniently be divided into three periods, which it is the object of
the following pages to analyse:

From the publication of _Evelina_ to the publication of _Sense and
Sensibility_, 1778-1811.

From the publication of _Sense and Sensibility_ to the publication of
_Jane Eyre_, 1811-1847.

From the publication of _Jane Eyre_ to the publication of _Daniel
Deronda_, 1847-1876.

It may be noticed, however, in passing to the establishment of a
feminine school by Fanny Burney, that individual women did pioneer
work; among whom the earliest, and the most important, is “the
ingenious Mrs. Aphra Behn” (1640-1689). She is generally believed
to have been the first woman “to earn a livelihood in a profession,
which, hitherto, had been exclusively monopolized by men,”--“she was,
moreover, the first to introduce milk punch into England”! For much of
her work she adopted a masculine pseudonym and, with it, a reckless
licence no doubt essential to success under the Restoration. Yet she
wrote “the first prose story that can be compared with things that
already existed in foreign literatures”; and, allowing for a few
rather outspoken descriptive passages, there is nothing peculiarly
objectionable in her _Oroonoko; or, The History of the Royal Slave_.
Making use of her own experience of the West Indies, acquired in
childhood, she invented the “noble savage,” the “natural man,” long
afterwards made fashionable by Rousseau; and boldly contrasted the
ingenuous virtues, and honour, of this splendid heathen with Christian
treachery and avarice. The “great and just character of Oroonoko,”
indeed, would scarcely have satisfied “Revolutionary” ideals of the
primitive; since he was inordinately proud of his birth and his beauty,
and killed his wife from an “artificial” sense of honour. But there is
a naïvely exaggerated simplicity in Mrs. Behn’s narrative; which does
faithfully represent, as she herself expresses it, “an absolute idea of
the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin.” Whence she
declares “it is most evident and plain, that simple nature is the most
harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress. It is she alone, if she
were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions
of man: _religion would here but destroy that tranquility they possess
by ignorance; and laws would but teach them to know offence, of which
now they have no notion_ ... they have a native justice, which knows
no fraud; and they understand no vice, or cunning, but when they are
taught by the white men.”

Our author is quite uncompromising in this matter; and her eulogy of
“fig-leaves” should refute the most cynical: “I have seen a handsome
young Indian, dying for love of a beautiful Indian maid; but all his
courtship was, to fold his arms, pursue her with his eyes, and sighs
were all his language: while she, as if no such lover were present, or
rather as if she desired none such, carefully guarded her eyes from
beholding him; and never approached him, but she looked down with all
the blushing modesty I have seen in the most severe and cautious of our
world.”

The actual story of _Oroonoko_ will hardly move us to-day; and the
final scene, where that Prince and gentleman is seen smoking a pipe
(!) as the horrid Christians “hack off” his limbs one by one, comes
dangerously near the ludicrous. Still we may “hope,” with the modest
authoress, that “the reputation of her pen is considerable enough to
make his glorious name to survive all ages.”

It should finally be remarked that Aphra forestalls one more innovation
of the next century, by introducing slight descriptions of scenery; and
that here, as always, she arrested her readers’ attention by plunging
straight into the story.

Two other professional women of that generation deserve mention: Mrs.
Manley (1672-1724), author of the scurrilous _New Atalantis_, and Mrs.
Heywood (or Haywood) (1693-1756), editor of the _Female Spectator_.
Both were employed by their betters for the secret promotion of vile
libels--the former political, the latter literary; and both wrote
novels of some vigour, but deservedly forgotten: although the latest,
and best, of Mrs. Manley’s were written after _Pamela_, and bear
striking witness to the influence of Richardson.

A few more years bring us to the true birth of the modern novel; when
Sarah Fielding (1710-1768), whose _David Simple_, in an unfortunate
attempt to combine sentiment with the picaresque, revealed some of
her brother’s humour and the decided influence of Richardson. And
though _The Female Quixote_ of Charlotte Lennox (1720-1804) has been
pronounced “more absurd than any of the romances which it was designed
to ridicule,” Macaulay himself allows it “great merit, when considered
as a wild satirical harlequinade”; and it remains an early, if not the
first, example of conscious revolt against the artificial tyrannies of
“Romance,” of which the evil influences on the art of fiction were soon
to be triumphantly abolished for ever by a sister-authoress.




THE FIRST WOMAN NOVELIST

(FANNY BURNEY, 1752-1840)


It is, to-day, a commonplace of criticism that the novel proper, though
partially forestalled in subject and treatment by Defoe, began with
Richardson’s _Pamela_ in 1740. The main qualities which distinguish
this work from our earlier “romances” were the attempt to copy, or
reproduce, real life; and the choice of middle-class society for
dramatis personæ. It is difficult for us to realise how long the
prejudice against “middle-class” characters held sway; but no doubt
Christopher North reflected the sentiments of the majority in 1829
when he represented the “Shepherd” declaring it to be his “profound
conviction that the strength o’ human nature lies either in the highest
or lowest estate of life. Characters in books should either be kings,
and princes, and nobles, and on a level with them, like heroes; or
peasants, shepherds, farmers, and the like, includin’ a’ orders amaist
o’ our ain working population. The intermediate class--that is,
leddies and gentlemen in general--are no worth the Muse’s while; for
their life is made up chiefly o’ mainners,--mainners,--mainners;--you
canna see the human creters for their claes; and should ane o’ them
commit suicide in despair, in lookin’ on the dead body, you are
mair taen up wi’ its dress than its decease.” The “romance” only
condescended below Prince or Peer for the exhibition of the Criminal.
It aimed at exaggeration in every detail for dramatic effect. It
recognised no limit to the resources of wealth, the beauty of virtue,
the splendour of heroism, or the corruption of villainy. It permitted
the supernatural. Fielding clearly considers it necessary to apologise
for the _vulgarity_ of mere “human nature”:

 “The provision, then, which we have here made, is no other than Human
 Nature: nor do I fear that any sensible reader, though most luxurious
 in his taste, will start, cavil, or be offended because I have named
 but one article. The tortoise, as the alderman of Bristol, well
 learned in eating, knows by much experience, besides the delicious
 calipash and calipee, contains many different kinds of food; nor can
 the learned reader be ignorant, that in human nature, though here
 collected under one general name, is such prodigious variety, that a
 cook will have sooner gone through all the several species of animal
 and vegetable food in the world, than an author will be able to
 exhaust so extensive a subject.

 “An objection may perhaps be apprehended from the more delicate, that
 this dish is too vulgar and common; for what else is the subject of
 all the romances, novels, plays, and poems, with which the stalls
 abound? Many exquisite viands might be rejected by the epicure, if it
 was sufficient cause for his contemning of them as common and vulgar,
 that something was to be found in the most paltry alleys under the
 same name. In reality, true nature is as difficult to be met with in
 authors, as the Bayonne ham, or Bologna sausage, is to be found in the
 shops.

 “But the whole, to continue the metaphor, consists in the cooking of
 the author; for, as Mr. Pope tells us,--

  ‘True wit is nature to advantage dress’d;
  What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.’

 “The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh
 eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part,
 and some of his limbs gibbetted, as it were, in the vilest stall in
 town. Where then lies the difference between the food of the nobleman
 and the porter, if both are at dinner on the same ox or calf, but in
 the seasoning, the dressing, the garnishing, and the setting forth?
 Hence the one provokes and incites the most languid appetite, and the
 other turns and palls that which is the sharpest and keenest.

 “In like manner the excellence of the mental entertainment consists
 less in the subject than in the author’s skill in well dressing
 it up. How pleased, therefore, will the reader be to find that we
 have, in the following work, adhered closely to one of the highest
 principles of the best cook which the present age, or perhaps that
 of Heliogabalus, hath produced? This great man, as is well known to
 all lovers of polite eating, begins at first by setting plain things
 before his hungry guests, rising afterwards by degrees, as their
 stomachs may be supposed to decrease, to the very quintessence of
 sauce and spices.

 “In like manner we shall represent human nature at first, to the keen
 appetite of our reader, in that more plain and simple manner in which
 it is found in the country, and shall hereafter hash and ragout it
 with all the high French and Italian seasoning of affectation and
 vice which courts and cities afford. By these means, we doubt not but
 our reader may be rendered desirous to read on for ever, as the great
 person just above mentioned, is supposed to have made some persons
 eat.”

Samuel Richardson, printer, revolutionised fiction. He inaugurated a
method of novel-writing: shrewdly adapted, and developed, by Fielding;
boisterously copied by Smollett; humorously varied by Goldsmith and
Sterne. And when the new ideal of realism and simple narrative had
been thus, more or less consciously, established as fit fruit for the
circulating library: that “evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge,”
finally purified of all offence against decency, was planted in every
household by a timid and bashful young lady, who “hemmed and stitched
from breakfast to dinner with scrupulous regularity.”

The mental development of Frances Burney, authoress of _Evelina_, was
encouraged by “no governess, no teacher of any art or of any language.”
Her father’s library contained only _one novel_; and she does not
appear to have supplemented it in this particular. But the peculiar
circumstances of Dr. Burney’s social position, and the infectious
enthusiasm of his artistic temperament, provided his daughter with very
exceptional opportunities for the study of material appropriate to the
construction of a modern novel. On the one hand, he permitted her free
intercourse “with those whom butlers and waiting-maids call vulgar”;
and, on the other, he gave her every opportunity of watching Society
at ease in the company of artists and men of letters. At his concerts
and tea-parties, again, she often saw Johnson and Garrick; Bruce, Omai,
and the “lions” of her generation; the peers and the politicians; the
ambassadors and the travellers; the singers and the fiddlers.

And, finally, if her most worthy stepmother has been derided for the
conventionality which discouraged the youthful “observer,” and dictated
a “bonfire” for her early manuscripts, it may not be altogether
fanciful to conjecture that the domestic ideals of feminine propriety
thus inculcated had some hand in shaping the precise direction of the
influence which Fanny was destined to exert upon the development of her
art.

For if _Evelina_ was modelled on the work of Richardson, and the
fathers of fiction, who had so recently passed away, it nevertheless
inaugurated a new departure--the expression of a feminine outlook on
life. It was, frankly and obviously, written by a woman for women,
though it captivated men of the highest intellect.

We need not suppose that Johnson’s pet “character-monger” set out
with any intention of accomplishing this reform; but the woman’s view
is so obvious on every page that we can scarcely credit the general
assumption of “experienced” _masculine_ authorship, which was certainly
prevalent during the few weeks it remained anonymous. It would have
been far more reasonable for the public to have accepted the legend
of its being written by a girl of seventeen. For the heroine is
represented as being no older; and though Miss Burney was twenty-six
at the time, she has been most extraordinarily successful in assuming
the tone of extreme youth, and thus emphasising still further the
innovation. Its main subject is “The Introduction of a Young Lady to
the World”; and being told in letters from the heroine to her guardian,
could scarcely have been better arranged, by a self-conscious artist,
for the exposition of the novelty. On the other hand, the success of
its execution doubtless owes much to the author’s spontaneity and to
her untrained mind. It would seem that she was blissfully unconscious
of any accepted “rules” in composition; and even in _Cecilia_,
generally supposed to be partially disfigured by Johnson’s advice,
it is only in the structure of her sentences that she attempted to
be “correct.” It is a more complex variant of the same theme, with a
precisely similar inspiration: the manipulation of her own experience
of life, and her own comments thereon.

It is obvious that we can only realise the precise nature of what she
accomplished for fiction by comparing her work with Richardson’s,
since Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne wove all their stories about
a “hero,” and even Goldsmith drew women through the spectacles of a
naïvely “superior” and obviously masculine vicar. Richardson, on the
other hand, was admittedly an expert in the analysis of the feminine.
We must recognise a lack of virility in touch and outlook. The prim
exactitude of his cautious realism, however startling in comparison
with anything before _Pamela_, has much affinity with what our
ancestors might have expected from their womenkind. Yet his women are
quite obviously studies, not self-revelations. We can fancy that Pamela
sat on his knee to have her portrait taken; while he was giving such
infinite care to Clarissa’s drapery on the model’s throne. We can only
marvel that he could ever determine whether Clementina or Miss Harriet
Byron were a more worthy mate for “the perfect man.” Verily they were
all as men made them; exquisite creatures, born for our delight, but
regulated by our taste in loveliness and virtue. That marvellous little
eighteenth-century tradesman understood their weaknesses no less than
their perfections; but the fine lines of his brush show through every
word or expression: the delicacy of outline is deliberately obtained by
art. They are patently the fruits of acute observation, keen sympathy,
and subtle draughtsmanship. They remain lay figures, posed for the
centre of the picture. The showman is there, pulling the strings.
And above all they are man-made. For all his extraordinary insight
Richardson can only see woman from the outside. Our _consciousness_
of his skill proves it is conscious. His world still centres round
the hero: the rustic fine gentleman, the courtly libertine, or the
immaculate male.

Fanny Burney reverses the whole process. To begin with external
evidence: it is Evelina who tells the tale, and every person or
incident is regarded from her point of view. The resultant difference
goes to the heart of the matter. The reader does not here feel that he
is studying a new type of female: he is making a new friend. Evelina
and Cecilia speak for themselves throughout. There is no sense of
effort or study; not because Fanny Burney is a greater artist or has
greater power to conceal her art, but because, for the accomplishment
of her task, she has simply to be herself. It is here, in fact, that
we find the peculiar charm, and the supreme achievement, of the women
who founded the school. By never attempting professional study of
life outside their own experience, they were enabled to produce a
series of feminine “Confessions”; which remain almost unique as
human documents. We must recognise that it was Richardson who had
made this permissible. He broke away, for ever, from the extravagant
impossibilities and unrealities of Romance. He copied life, and
life moreover in its prosaic aspect--the work-a-day, unpicturesque
experience of the middle-class. But still he lingered among its crises.
It is not that in his days men were still given to the expression of
emotion by words, and deeds, of violence. While beautiful maidens were
liable to be driven furiously by the villain into the presence of an
unfrocked clergyman; while money could buy a whole army of accomplices
for their undoing; Richardson remains a realist in the narration of
such episodes. We are here referring to the fact that his stories are
all concerned with the elaborate development of one central emotion or
the analysis of one predominating character. They are pictures of life
composed for the exhibition of a slightly phenomenal aspect: the depths
of human nature, not commonly obvious to us in the moods of a day.

It was reserved for Fanny Burney, and still more Jane Austen, to “make
a story” out of the trivialities of our everyday existence; to reveal
humanity at a tea-party or an afternoon call. This is, of course, but
carrying on his reform one step further. The women, besides introducing
the new element of their own especial point of view, made the new
realism strictly _domestic_; and learned to depend, even less than
he, upon the exceptional, more obviously dramatic, or less normal,
incidents of actual life. If Richardson invented the ideal of fidelity
to human nature, Miss Burney selected its everyday habits and costume
for imitation. Evelina’s account of “shopping” in London would not fit
into Richardson’s scheme; while the many incidents and characters,
introduced merely for comic effect, lie outside his province.

Miss Burney’s ideal for heroines, indeed, must seem singularly
old-fashioned to-day; nor do we delight in _Evelina_ for those passages
to which its author devoted her most serious ambitions. She does not
excel in minute, or sustained, characterisation; nor have we ever
entirely confirmed the appreciation which declares that her work was
“inspired by one consistent vein of passion, never relaxed.” The
passion of Evelina--by which, however, the critic does _not_ mean her
love for Orville--has always seemed to us melodramatic and artificial.
We have little, or no, patience with those refined tremors and
heart-burnings which completely prostrate the young lady at the mere
possibility of seeing her long-lost father. It is not in human nature
to feel so deeply about anyone we have never seen, of whom we know
nothing but evil.

No blame attaches to Miss Burney as an artist in this respect, however,
because she was intent upon the revelation of _sensibility_, that most
elusive of female graces on which our grandmothers were wont to pride
themselves. Any definition of this quality, suited to our comprehension
to-day, would seem beyond the subtleties of emotional analysis; but
we may observe, as some indication of its meaning, that no _man_ was
ever supposed, or expected, to possess it. Sensibility, in fact, was
the acknowledged privilege of _ladies_--as distinguished at once from
gentlemen or women; particularly becoming in youth; and indicating the
well-bred, the elegant, and the fastidious. It must not, of course,
be confounded with “susceptibility,” a sign of weakness; for though
it, temporarily, unfitted the lady for action or speech, it was the
expression of deep, permanent, feeling and of exquisite taste. Her
gentle voice rendered inaudible by tears, her streaming eyes buried
in the cushions of her best sofa, or on the bosom of her best friend,
the beautiful maiden would fondly persuade herself that her life
was blighted for evermore. Pierced to the heart by a cold world, a
faithless friend, or a stern parent, as the case might be, she would
terrify those who loved her by the wild expression of her eyes, the
dead whiteness of her lips, her feeble gesticulations, and the disorder
of her whole person. In the end, mercifully, she would--faint! Under
such influences, we cannot distinguish very explicitly between the
effects of joy or sorrow. Evelina is scarcely more natural about her
transports at discovering a brother, or in the final _satisfaction_ of
her filial instincts, than in her alarm about “how He would receive
her,” already mentioned.

We are not justified, on the other hand, in supposing that a heroine
should only exhibit sensibility on some real emotional catastrophe.
There was a tendency, we have observed, in “elegant females” to be
utterly abashed and penetrated with remorse, covered with shame,
trembling with alarm, and on the verge of hysterics--from joy or
grief--upon most trivial provocation. A tone, a look, even a movement,
if unexpected or mysterious, was generally sufficient to upset the
nice adjustment of their mental equilibrium. “Have I done wrong? Am I
misunderstood? Is it possible he _really_ loves me?” The dear creatures
passed through life on the edge of a precipice: on the borderland
between content, despair, and the seventh heaven.

The wonder of it all comes from admitting that Miss Burney actually
reconciles us to such absurdities. Except in the passionate scenes,
Evelina’s sensibility is one of her chief charms. In some mysterious
and subtle fashion, it really indicates the superiority of her mind
and her essential refinement. She will be prattling away, with all the
naïveté of genuine innocence, about her delight in the condescending
perfections of the “noble Orville,” and then--at _one_ word of warning
from her beloved guardian--the whole world assumes other aspects,
no man may be trusted, and she would fly at once to peace, and
forgetfulness, in the country. We smile, inevitably, at the “complete
_ingénue_”; but the quick response to her old friend’s loving anxiety,
the transparent candour of a purity which, if instinctive, is not
dependent on ignorance, combine to form a really “engaging” personality.

It may be that we have here discovered the secret of sensibility--a
perception of the fine shades, and instant responsiveness to them.
There is, however, a most instructive passage in _The Mysteries of
Udolpho_ which throws much light on this matter. Mrs. Radcliffe
has every claim to be heard, for her heroines are much addicted to
sensibility. The passage occurs in an early chapter; when St. Aubert is
dying, and naturally wishes to impress upon his orphan daughter such
truths as may guide her safely through life. It has, therefore, all
the significance of the death-bed; while he “had never thought more
justly, or expressed himself more clearly, than he did now.” Under such
circumstances, and in such manner, did that worthy gentleman discourse
on


THE DANGERS OF SENSIBILITY

 “Above all, my dear Emily, said he, do not indulge in the pride of
 fine feeling, the romantic error of amiable minds. Those who really
 possess sensibility ought early to be taught that it is a dangerous
 quality, which is continually extracting the excess of misery or
 delight from every surrounding circumstance. And since, in our passage
 through this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently than
 pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute
 than our sense of good, we become the victim of our feelings, unless
 we can in some degree command them. I know you will say--for you are
 young, my Emily--I know you will say, that you are contented sometimes
 to suffer, rather than give up your refined sense of happiness at
 others; but when your mind has been long harassed by vicissitude, you
 will be content to rest, and you will then recover from your delusion:
 you will perceive that the phantom of happiness is exchanged for the
 substance; for happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult:
 it is of a temperate and uniform nature; and can no more exist in a
 heart that is continually alive to minute circumstances than in one
 that is dead to feeling. You see, my dear, that, though I would guard
 you against the dangers of sensibility, I am not an advocate for
 apathy. At your age, I should have said _that_ is a vice more hateful
 than all the errors of sensibility, and I say so still. I call it a
 _vice_, because it leads to positive evil. In this, however, it does
 no more than an ill-governed sensibility, which, by such a rule, might
 also be called a vice; but the evil of the former is of more general
 consequence....

 “I would not teach you to become insensible, if I could--I would only
 warn you of the evils of susceptibility, and point out how you may
 avoid them. Beware, my love, I conjure you, of that self-delusion
 which has been fatal to the peace of many persons--beware of priding
 yourself on the gracefulness of sensibility: if you yield to this
 vanity, your happiness is lost for ever. Always remember how much more
 valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of sensibility.
 Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy: apathy cannot know
 the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence, one act of
 real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.
 Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to
 good actions: the miser, who thinks himself respectable merely because
 he possesses wealth, and thus mistakes the means of doing good for the
 actual accomplishment of it, is not more blameable than the man of
 sentiment without active virtue. You may have observed persons, who
 delight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, that they
 turn from the distressed, and because their sufferings are painful to
 be contemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them. How despicable is
 that humanity which can be contented to pity where it might assuage!”

And we are finally disposed to question whether Miss Burney herself
were actually conscious of the subtlety with which she has allowed her
heroine to reveal, in every sentence, the scarcely perceptible advance
of her unsuspected “partiality.” The reader, of course, recognises
Orville at sight for what he proves to be in the final event; but he
frequently reminds us of Sir Charles Grandison--and in nothing so much,
perhaps, as in his gentlemanly precautions against letting himself go
or expressing his emotions. Only a woman of real delicacy, indeed,
could have imagined, or appreciated, the self-effacement with which
he helps and protects the guileless heroine from her unprincipled
admirers; and it required genuine refinement to give him the courage
evinced by his tactful inquiries into her circumstances and his most
fatherly advice. The whole development of the relations between them
must be acknowledged as a triumph of art, and conclusive evidence of
“nice” feeling.

It is impossible, I think, to put Cecilia herself on a level with
Evelina; though I personally have always felt that the more crowded
canvas of the _book_ so entitled, and its greater variety of incident,
reveal more mature power. But it is less spontaneous and, in a certain
sense, less original. To begin with, Cecilia is always conscious of her
superiority. Like her sister heroine, a country “miss,” and suddenly
tossed into Society without any proper guidance, she yet assumes
the centre of the stage without effort, and queens it over the most
experienced, by virtue of beauty and wealth. It may be doubted if
she has much “sensibility” for everyday matters: whereas the lavish
expenditure of emotional fireworks over the haughty Delviles, and the
melodramatic sufferings they entail, are most intolerably protracted,
and entirely destroy our interest in the conclusion of the narrative.
The occasional scene, or episode, we complained of in _Evelina_, is
here extended to long chapters, or books, of equally strained passion
on a more complex issue. Fortunately they all come at the end, and need
not disturb our enjoyment of the main story; though, indeed, the whole
plot depends far more on melodramatic effect. Mr. Harrell’s abominable
recklessness, and his sensational suicide, the criminal passion of Mr.
Monckton, and the story of Henrietta Belfield, carry us into depths
beyond the reach of _Evelina_, where Miss Burney herself does not walk
with perfect safety. And, in our judgment, such experiences diminish
the charm of her heroine.

Yet in the main Cecilia possesses, and exhibits those primarily
feminine qualities which now made their first appearance in English
fiction, being beyond man’s power to delineate. She, too, is that
“Womanly Woman” whom Mr. Bernard Shaw has so eloquently denounced. She
has the magnetic power of personal attraction; the charm of mystery;
the strength of weakness; the irresistible appeal with which Nature has
endowed her for its own purposes: so seldom present in the man-made
heroine, certainly not revealed to Samuel Richardson and his great
contemporaries.

For the illustration of our main theme, we have so far dwelt upon
the revelation of womanhood achieved by Miss Burney. It is time to
consider, in more detail, her application of the new “realism,” her
method of “drawing from life,” now first recognised as the proper
function of the novelist. It is here that her unique education, or
experience, has full play. Instead of depending, like Richardson, upon
the finished analysis of a few characters, centred about one emotional
situation, or of securing variety of interests and character-types, _à
la_ Fielding, by use of the “wild-oats” convention, she works up the
astonishing “contrasts” in life, which she had herself been privileged
to witness, and achieves comedy by the abnormal mixture of Society.
Thus she is able to find drama in domesticity. Her most original
effects are produced in the drawing-room or the assembly, at a ball or
a theatre, in the “long walks” of Vauxhall or Ranelagh: wherever, and
whenever, mankind is seen only at surface-value, enjoying the pleasures
and perils of everyday existence. How vividly, as Macaulay remarks,
did she conjecture “the various scenes, tragic and comic, through
which the poor motherless girl, highly connected on one side, meanly
connected on the other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal beings,
good and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid young
orphan: a coarse sea-captain; an ugly insolent fop, blazing in a superb
court-dress; another fop, as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow
Hill, and tricked out in second-hand finery for the Hampstead ball; an
old woman, all wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a
Miss of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vulgar French
and vulgar English; a poet lean and ragged, with a broad Scotch accent.
By degrees these shadows acquired stronger and stronger consistence:
the impulse which urged Fanny to write became irresistible; and the
result was the history of Evelina.”

Of what must seem, to our thinking, the extraordinary licence permitted
to persons accounted gentlemen, Miss Burney avails herself to the
utmost; and Evelina is scarcely less often embarrassed or distressed
by Willoughby’s violence and the insolence of Lord Merton, than by
the stupid vulgarity of the Branghtons and “Beau” Smith. We have
primarily the sharp contrast between Society and Commerce--each with
its own standards of comfort, pleasure, and decorum; and secondarily,
a great variety of individual character (and ideal) within both
groups. The “contrasts” of Cecilia are, in the main, more specifically
individual, lacking the one general sharp class division, and may be
more accurately divided into one group of Society “types,” another of
Passions exemplified in persons obsessed by a single idea. It is “in
truth a grand and various picture-gallery, which presented to the eye
a long series of men and women, each marked by some strong peculiar
feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of blood and
the pride of money, morbid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous
garrulity, supercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh at everything,
and a Heraclitus to lament over everything.... Mr. Delvile never
opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station; or
Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr.
Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of
a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking
remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr.
Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr.
Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich and the miseries
of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on her
son; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her husband.
Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all
sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly
prattle.”

It is primarily, indeed, a most diverting picture of manners; and if,
as we have endeavoured to show, Miss Burney advanced on Richardson by
the revelation of womanhood in her heroines, the realism of her minor
persons must be applauded rather for its variety in outward seeming
than for its subtlety of characterisation. As Ben Jonson hath it:

  “When some one peculiar quality
  Does so possess a man, that it doth draw
  All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
  In their confluxions all to run one way,
  This may be truly said to be a _humour_.”

It is in the exhibition of “humours” that our authoress delights and
excels.

Of any particular construction Miss Burney was entirely guiltless;
in this respect, of course, lagging far behind Fielding. She has no
style, beyond a most attractive spontaneity; writing in “true _woman’s_
English, clear, natural, and lively.” Under the watchful eye of Dr.
Johnson, indeed, she made some attempt at the rounded period, the
“elegant” antithesis, in _Cecilia_: but, regretting the obvious effort,
we turn here again, with renewed delight, to the flowing simplicity of
her dramatic dialogue.

There is no occasion, at this time of day, to dwell upon her
sparkling wit, though we may note in passing its obviously
feminine inspiration--as opposed to the more scholarly subtleties
of Fielding--and its patent superiority to, for example, the
kitten-sprightliness of Richardson’s “Lady G.” We cannot claim that
Miss Burney made any particular _advance_ in this matter; but, here
again, her work stands out as the first permanent expression--at least
in English--of that shrewd vivacity and quickness of observation with
which so many a woman, who might have founded a salon, has been wont
to enliven the conversation of the home and to promote the gaiety of
social gatherings. We must recognise, on the other hand, that, if
commonly more refined than her generation, Miss Burney has yielded to
its prejudice against foreigners in some coarseness towards Madame
Duval; as we marvel at her father’s approval of this detail--while
actually deploring the vigour of her contempt for Lovel, the fop!

Finally, for all technicalities of her art, Miss Burney remains an
amateur in authorship, who, by a lucky combination of genius and
experience, was destined to utter the first word for women in the
most popular form of literature; and to point the way to her most
illustrious successors for the perfection of the domestic novel.

Probably the most important, more or less contemporary, criticism on
the early achievements of women, was uttered--incidentally--by Hazlitt
in 1818. Dismissing Miss Edgeworth’s _Tales_ as “a kind of pedantic,
pragmatical common-sense, tinctured with the pertness and pretensions
of the paradoxes to which they are so complacently opposed,” assigning
the first place to Mrs. Radcliffe for her power of “describing the
indefinable and embodying a phantom,” he says of Miss Burney and of
feminine work generally:

 “Madame D’Arblay is a mere common observer of manners, _and also a
 very woman_. It is this last circumstance which forms the peculiarity
 of her writings, and distinguishes them from those masterpieces[1]
 which I have before mentioned. She is a quick, lively, and accurate
 observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them with a
 consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it is
 the particular business and interest of women to observe them ... her
 _forte_ is in describing the absurdities and affectations of external
 behaviour, or the manners of people in company.... The form such
 characters or people might be supposed to assume for a night at a
 masquerade....

 “Women, in general, have a quicker perception of any oddity or
 singularity of character than men, and are more alive to any absurdity
 which arises from a violation of the rules of society, or a deviation
 from established custom. This partly arises from the restraints on
 their own behaviour, which turn their attention constantly on the
 subject, and partly from other causes. The surface of their minds,
 like that of their bodies, seems of a finer texture than ours; more
 soft, and susceptible of immediate impulses. They have less muscular
 strength, less power of continued voluntary attention, of reason,
 passion, and imagination; but they are more easily impressed with
 whatever appeals to their senses or habitual prejudices. The intuitive
 perception of their minds is less disturbed by any abstruse reasonings
 on causes or consequences. They learn the idiom of character, as they
 acquire that of language, by rote, without troubling themselves about
 the principles. Their observation is not the less accurate on that
 account, as far as it goes, for it has been well said that ‘there is
 nothing so true as habit.’

 “There is little other power in Madame D’Arblay’s novels than that
 of immediate observation; her characters, whether of refinement or
 vulgarity, are equally superficial and confined. The whole is a
 question of form, whether that form is adhered to or infringed. It
 is this circumstance which takes away dignity and interest from her
 story and sentiments, and makes the one so teasing and tedious, and
 the other so insipid. The difficulties in which she involves her
 heroines are too much ‘Female Difficulties’; they are difficulties
 created out of nothing. The author appears to have no other idea of
 refinement than that it is the reverse of vulgarity; but the reverse
 of vulgarity is fastidiousness and affectation. There is a true and
 a false delicacy. Because a vulgar country Miss would answer ‘Yes’
 to a proposal of marriage in the first page, Madame D’Arblay makes
 it a proof of an excess of refinement, and an indispensable point
 of etiquette in her young ladies, to postpone the answer to the end
 of five volumes, without the smallest reason for their doing so, and
 with every reason to the contrary.... The whole artifice of her fable
 consists in coming to no conclusion. Her ladies ‘stand so upon their
 going,’ that they do not go at all.... They would consider it as
 quite indecorous to run downstairs though the house were in flames,
 or to move an inch off the pavement though a scaffolding was falling.
 She has formed to herself an abstract idea of perfection in common
 behaviour, which is quite as romantic and impracticable as any other
 idea of the sort.... Madame D’Arblay has woven a web of difficulties
 for her heroines, something like the great silken threads in which
 the shepherdesses entangled the steed of Cervantes’ hero, who swore,
 in his fine enthusiastic way, that he would sooner cut his passage to
 another world than disturb the least of these beautiful meshes.”

The critic recognises the essential quality of Miss Burney’s work--its
femininity--which he reckons, curiously enough, as a fault. But
prejudices die hard and it is evident that he is not ready for the new
point of view.

  _Evelina_, 1778.
  _Cecilia_, 1782.
  _Camilla_, 1796.
  _The Wanderer_, 1814.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Of Richardson, Fielding, etc.




A PICTURE OF YOUTH


It is natural, if not inevitable, that the later works of Miss Burney
should have been suffered to remain unread and unremembered. Critics
have told us that they only face them unwillingly, from a sense of
duty; and none has ventured a second time. To-day, no doubt, readers
would hesitate before the five, or more, volumes of extenuated
sensibility.

And yet, though we should not ask for any reversal of this verdict,
there are points of interest--at any rate in _Camilla_--which will
repay attention. The fact is, that in this work Miss Burney has given
full rein to her ideal of women, her conception of home life, and her
notions about marriage: all eminently characteristic of the age, and
full of suggestion as to the work of women.

We have again, as the closing paragraph reminds us, “a picture of
youth,” primarily feminine; but Camilla is no mere repetition either of
Evelina or Cecilia. She has even more sensibility, and a new quality of
most attractive impulsiveness, which is perpetually leading her into
difficulties.

There is a double contrast, or comparison, of types. The heroine’s
uncle--Sir Hugh Tyrold--seems to have been conceived as a parody of the
young lady herself. He flies off at a tangent--far more youthfully than
she--changes his will three or four times in the first few chapters,
and is constantly upsetting the whole family by most ridiculous “plans”
for their happiness.

On the other hand, Edgar Mandlebert--the hero--suffers from too much
caution; implanted, it is true, by his worthy tutor; but obviously “at
home” in his nature. Practically the whole five volumes are concerned
with the misunderstandings produced by Camilla’s hasty self-sacrifices,
and his care in studying her character, without the key to her motives.
It would be easy, indeed, to describe the plot as a prolonged “much ado
about nothing.” The sentiments involved are palpably strained, absurdly
high-flown, and singularly unbalanced. But we should remember two
reasons for modifying our judgment, and hesitating before a complete
condemnation.

In the first place, the ideals for women, and for all intercourse
between the sexes, differ in nearly every particular from those of our
own day; and, in the second, these people were almost ridiculously
young. Love affairs, and often marriage, began for them when they
were fifteen; and it may be that were our own sons and daughters put
to the test at that age, their deeds and sentiments might surprise us
considerably.

 “In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla. Nature, with
 a bounty the most profuse, had been lavish to her of attractions;
 Fortune, with a moderation yet kinder, had placed her between luxury
 and indigence. Her abode was in the parsonage-house of Etherington,
 beautifully situated in the unequal county of Hampshire, and in the
 vicinity of the varied landscapes of the New Forest. Her father, the
 rector, was the younger son of the house of Tyrold. The living, though
 not considerable, enabled its incumbent to attain every rational
 object of his modest and circumscribed wishes; to bestow upon a
 deserving wife whatever her own forbearance declined not; to educate
 a lovely race of one son and three daughters, with that expansive
 propriety, which unites improvement for the future with present
 enjoyment.

 “In goodness of heart, and in principles of piety, this exemplary
 couple were bound to each other by the most perfect union of
 character, though in their tempers there was a contrast which had
 scarce the gradation of a single shade to smooth off its abrupt
 dissimilitude. Mr. Tyrold, gentle with wisdom, and benign in virtue,
 saw with compassion all imperfections but his own, and there doubled
 the severity which to others he spared. Yet the mildness that urged
 him to pity blinded him not to approve; his equity was unerring,
 though his judgment was indulgent. His partner had a firmness of
 mind which nothing could shake: calamity found her resolute; even
 prosperity was powerless to lull her duties asleep. The exalted
 character of her husband was the pride of her existence, and the
 source of her happiness. He was not merely her standard of excellence,
 but of endurance, since her sense of his worth was the criterion for
 her opinion of all others. This instigated a spirit of comparison,
 which is almost always uncandid, and which here could rarely escape
 proving injurious. Such, at its very best, is the unskilfulness of
 our fallible nature, that even the noble principle which impels
 our love of right, misleads us but into new deviations, when its
 ambition presumes to point at perfection. In this instance, however,
 distinctness of disposition stifled not reciprocity of affection--that
 magnetic concentration of all marriage felicity;--Mr. Tyrold revered
 while he softened the rigid virtues of his wife, who adored while she
 fortified the melting humanity of her husband.”

Mrs. Tyrold, in fact, was a most alarming lady; and as that
“sad fellow,” their son Lionel--one of “the merry blades of
Oxford”--remarked with spirit, “A good father is a very serious
misfortune to a poor lad like me, as the world runs; it causes one such
confounded gripes of conscience for every little awkward thing one
does.”

It will be seen, at once, that such surroundings promised that
“repose” so “welcome to the worn and to the aged, to the sick and to
the happy,” with small occasion for “danger, difficulty, and toil”--the
delight of youth. Wherefore the flock, with only the son for black
sheep, must quit the fold, and see something of the wicked world
outside the garden. Their first venture would seem harmless enough;
being no farther than over the fields to Cleves Park, just purchased by
Uncle Sir Hugh, who had “inherited from his ancestors an unencumbered
estate of £5,000 per annum.”

 “His temper was unalterably sweet, and every thought of his breast
 was laid open to the world with an almost infantine artlessness.
 But his talents bore no proportion to the goodness of his heart,
 an insuperable want of quickness, and of application in his early
 days, having left him, at a later period, wholly uncultivated, and
 singularly self-formed.”

Mrs. Tyrold found occasion for further delight in the “superiority”
of her husband; “though she was not insensible to the fair future
prospects of her children, which seemed the probable result of this
change of abode.” Both parents, indeed, prove unexpectedly “worldly”
on this point; and though obviously far above the sacrifice of
_principle_ for _profit_, they permit their offspring to run risks--as
they deem them--in their complaisance to a rich relative.

Sir Hugh is a very prodigy of indiscretion, and complicates matters
by the introduction of more cousins--Indiana Lynmere, an empty-headed
but “most exquisite workmanship of nature,” and her wicked brother
Clermont; who were his wards. A young orphan of great wealth, Edgar
Mandlebert, pupil and ward of the Rev. Tyrold, completes the group;
though mischief is made, and all complications really inaugurated, by
Indiana’s silly governess, Miss Margland.

Obviously there are two main issues at stake--the property of Sir Hugh,
and the hand of Edgar. Miss Margland desires both for her favourite,
and evinces much ingenuity in the pursuit. The worthy baronet, however,
does not long hesitate about the estate. He designs it originally for
Camilla, simply because she charms him most, and, with his customary
naïveté, lets all the world into the secret. Then, by his own absurd
thoughtlessness, he suffers the “little sister Eugenia” to catch
the smallpox; and by ill-timed playfulness, lames her for life.
Heart-broken with remorse, and perfectly confident in Camilla’s
generous disinterestedness, he promptly compensates the poor child by
making _her_ his heiress; and, after again announcing his intentions in
public, proves unexpectedly resolute in maintaining them to the end.
By outsiders, however, it is occasionally still supposed that all his
money will go to Camilla; and, consequently, she has some experience of
fortune-hunters.

The character of Eugenia deserves notice. She is quite unlike Camilla,
and the differences are no doubt accentuated by the combination
of disease and deformity which, shutting her out from the obvious
distractions of “youth,” afford much time for solitary reflection. Her
uncle, moreover, provided her with a scholarly tutor, and to Lionel she
was always “dear little Greek and Latin.” It was, indeed, this highly
educated, but very youthful, paragon on whom her own family depended at
every crisis, whose advice they followed, whose opinion they sought,
whose approval was their standard of conduct and feeling. Younger than
Camilla, she was more mature, more thoughtful and clear-headed, always
decided and always right. Curiously enough, these young people seldom
consulted their parents, they went to Eugenia; and she, in the most
important crisis of her life, actually _opposed_ the judgment of her
elders, demanding from herself a sacrifice which even their lofty ideal
did not expect or commend. They considered her mistaken, but “they knew
she must do what she thought right,” and they sadly acquiesced.

Yet there were no Spartan heroics about Eugenia. She had even more
“sensibility” than Camilla, far more romance, and was more easily
deceived. Among other schemes of repentance for the injuries he had
so innocently inflicted on her, Sir Hugh “arranged” for her to marry
Clermont Lynmere, before that young gentleman had come home; and, of
course, informed the whole household of his project. Such was Eugenia’s
extravagant refinement in romance, that, though she could not avoid
being attracted by the most obviously insincere raptures of young men
in want of her fortune, one of them “kissing her hand she thought a
_liberty most unpardonable_. She regarded it as an injury to Clermont,
that would risk his life should he ever know it, _and a blot to her own
delicacy_, as irreparable as it was irremediable.”

It is obvious that such excessive refinement proves ill-fitted to
combat the unprincipled ambitions of the other sex, incited by her
uncle’s generosity; and when the villain, feigning a passion well
calculated to stir her fancy, threatens to blow out his brains if she
refuse him, we do not read of her yielding with surprise. To her notion
a promise given under any circumstances is absolutely binding; and
when, undeceived, she is recommended by her pious parents to repudiate
it, the heroic martyr remains steadfast, and suffers much through some
volumes. Yet even in that extremity she proves a rock to her more
wavering elder sister.

We have wandered too long, however, from our heroine.

 “Camilla was, in secret, the fondest hope of her mother, though the
 rigour of her justice scarce permitted the partiality to beat even
 in her own breast. Nor did the happy little person need the avowed
 distinction. The tide of youthful glee flowed jocund from her heart,
 and the transparency of her fine blue veins almost showed the velocity
 of its current. Every look was a smile, every step was a spring, every
 thought was a hope, every feeling was joy! and the early felicity of
 her mind was without alloy.... The beauty of Camilla, though neither
 perfect nor regular, had an influence peculiar on the beholder, it
 was hard to catch its fault; and the cynic connoisseur, who might
 persevere in seeking it, would involuntarily surrender the strict
 rules of his art to the predominance of its loveliness. Even judgment
 itself, the coolest and last betrayed of our faculties, she took
 by surprise, though it was not till she was absent the seizure was
 detected. Her disposition was ardent in sincerity, her mind untainted
 with evil. The reigning and radical defect of her character--an
 imagination that submitted to no control--proved not any antidote
 against her attractions: it caught, by its force and fire, the
 quick-kindling admiration of the lively; it possessed, by magnetic
 persuasion, the witchery to create sympathy in the most serious.”

It is a picture of an ideal, stammeringly defined by Edgar: “The utmost
vivacity of sentiment, all the charm of soul, eternally beaming in
the eyes, playing in every feature, glowing in the complexion, and
brightening every smile.”

Obviously hero and heroine are born for each other. He admires her
above all women, himself has every perfection. And though Mrs. Tyrold
may have “gloried in the virtuous delicacy of her daughter, that so
properly, _till it was called for_, concealed her tenderness from the
object who so deservingly inspired it,” the reader can feel no doubt,
from the beginning, of her decided “partiality.”

There are two obstacles, however, between the lovers. In the first
place, Edgar’s tutor had twice been deceived by women; and so acts
upon his loyal pupil, by the urgent recommendation of caution and
delay, that he becomes “a creature whose whole composition is a pile
of accumulated punctilios”; one who “will spend his life in refining
away his own happiness.” It is obvious that, left to herself, Camilla’s
nature would bear the closest inspection, as even the old misanthrope
ultimately admits. But Miss Margland cannot endure any rivalry with
Indiana, the “beautiful vacant-looking cousin” who has been taught to
consider herself irresistible, though it is not quite clear what Miss
Burney would have her readers believe as to the power of beauty. At
one point she declares that “a very young man seldom likes a silly
wife. It is generally when he is further advanced in life that he takes
that depraved taste. He then flatters himself a fool will be easier to
govern.” But elsewhere we are told that

 “Men are always enchanted with something that is both pretty and
 silly; because they can so easily please and so soon disconcert it;
 and when they have made the little blooming fools blush and look down,
 they feel nobly superior, and pride themselves in victory.... A man
 looks enchanted while his beautiful young bride talks nonsense; it
 comes so prettily from her ruby lips, and she blushes and dimples with
 such lovely attraction while she utters it; he casts his eyes around
 him with conscious elation to see her admirers, and his enviers.”

The wily governess has all the audacity of a born diplomatist. She
simply informs Sir Hugh, who always believes everybody, that Edgar is
“practically” engaged to her pet pupil. The old man regards the matter
as settled, and, in perfect innocence, encourages her machinations to
make a fact of her desire--the girl herself being flattered into an
indifferent accomplice.

Now Camilla had acquired the habit, quite becoming to girlhood, of
looking to Edgar, more or less consciously, for guidance through
life, and of actually asking his advice on all delicate, or doubtful,
occasions. Miss Margland ingeniously accuses her of trying to catch
the heir by these “confidences,” and Sir Hugh, without for one moment
acknowledging the possibility of Camilla having a bad motive, advises
her to avoid even the appearance of jealousy, and leave Indiana a fair
field. Such an appeal to her generosity, from so kind a friend, was
sure of eager support; and the unfortunate girl is thus driven to seek
friends against whom Edgar had warned her, and to assume the character
of capriciousness and instability. This proves her Introduction to the
Great World, whither Miss Burney hurries all her heroines. Like the
rest, she arrives entirely unprepared, parents of those days apparently
not considering either advice or guidance on such matters a part of
their duty. Framed for innocent pleasure, her natural gaiety and ardent
temperament lead her astray in every direction. She remains entirely
unsoiled, but invariably does the wrong thing. She gets into debt,
through sheer ignorance and humility; she makes friends of “doubtful”
people, through pity and innocence; she even follows the advice of a
worldly acquaintance, attempting to move her lover by flirting with
other men. Every word and action is designed to please him: all have
the contrary effect. His heart remains faithful; his reason must
criticise.

At this stage of the work Miss Burney revives somewhat of her first,
spontaneous, manner. The descriptions of Society--wherein “_Ton_,
in the scale of connoisseurs in _certain circles_, is as much above
fashion, as fashion is above fortune”--are animated and amusing. We
are introduced to many new types, male and female, naïvely exaggerated
perhaps in detail, but absolutely alive and cunningly varied. The
“prevailing ill-manners of the leaders in the _ton_” astonish, no less
than their brutal cowardice--in face of a _girl’s_ danger--disgusts.
Fine gentlemen, it would seem, are neither gallant nor chivalrous.
The ladies, indeed, are not much better. A divinity, unequally yoked,
“excites every hope by a _sposo_[2] properly detestable--yet gives
birth to despair by a coldness the most shivering.” Less favoured
beauties are equally vain, and some of them more indiscreet.

But here, as in _Cecilia_, our author cannot resist the indulgence of
heroics. She is not satisfied with her delightful “Comedy of Manners,”
with the ordinary misunderstandings and heart-burnings essential to
romance. In her later volumes she plunges Camilla, and the whole Tyrold
family, into the wildest distress. They lose all their money; Eugenia’s
husband commits suicide; Lionel nearly murders an uncle, from whom
he had expectations, by a practical joke; and Camilla acquires, by an
over-elaborated series of foolish impulses, the appearance of having
injured her parents beyond forgiveness. Immersed in difficulties, and
not in the least understanding the circumstances, her father and mother
refuse to see her; and the forsaken maiden prays for death. The whole
episode is given in Miss Burney’s worst manner, tempting the reader
to mere angry impatience with so much false sentiment and senseless
emotion. They tremble, they faint, they weep, they see visions; we
could almost fancy ourselves in Bedlam.

In the end, of course, Edgar comes back, receives an “explanation”
from Camilla--written, as she supposed, on her death-bed; and promptly
restores everybody to their senses and, incidentally--having plenty to
spare--to prosperity.

 “Thus ended the long conflicts, doubts, suspenses, and sufferings
 of Edgar and Camilla; who, without one inevitable calamity, one
 unavoidable distress, so nearly fell the sacrifice to the two extremes
 of Imprudence, and Suspicion, to the natural heedlessness of youth
 unguided, or to the acquired distrust of experience that had been
 wounded.”

At first sight, certainly, it would seem that we had little here of the
Richardson-realism, and that Miss Burney was challenging comparison, in
their own field, with such melodramatic romancists as Mrs. Radcliffe.
Yet Camilla, and even Eugenia, are far more like real life than Emily
St. Aubert. However extravagantly composed, they are _founded on_
nature, whereas the older novelists worked entirely from imagination.
Before Richardson (and here, of course, Mrs. Radcliffe belongs to the
earlier age) the models for character were not drawn from experience
and observation. There was, it would seem, a preconceived notion, and
certain accepted rules, for the “make-up” of heroes, heroines, parents,
villains and the rest--which are somewhat akin to the constructed ideal
of abstract Beauty favoured by certain art critics. They were prepared,
without very much reference to actual humanity, from mysteriously
acquired recipes of virtue and vice.

We cannot find any reason to believe that Miss Burney ever worked,
in her most “exalted” moments, on such a plan. She idealised from
life, not from the imagination. She really believed that the young
ladies of her acquaintance all aimed, more or less consciously,
at that exquisite delicacy which she delighted to exhibit; and, in
all probability, she was justified in her faith. Her rhapsodies
are sincere; and they obviously apply to her own sentiments,
shared by her contemporaries. They are--in their own very feminine
fashion--reflections on reality--not creations of art by any accepted
canons.

And the very exaggerated artificiality of _Camilla_ makes it more
typical--of herself and her period--than _Evelina_ or _Cecilia_: and
therefore more representative of Woman, when she began to write fiction
for herself. The genius of her earlier work carried it some way in
advance of its time; although the progress of her immediate successors
is most remarkable. Camilla is the very essence of eighteenth-century
girlhood; ill-mated, as they were no doubt, to “our present race of
young men,” whose “frivolous fickleness nauseates whatever they can
reach”; who--when they are not heroes--“have a weak shame of asserting,
or even listening to what is right, and a shallow pride in professing
and performing what is wrong.”

It is instructive, indeed, to observe with what apparent crudity Miss
Burney has chosen to illustrate the greater purity and refinement,
the superior moral standard, of women to those of men: a problem which
seems to have almost vanished with Jane Austen (though we may detect it
at work under the surface), and which has reappeared so prominently,
after quite a new fashion, in modern literature. By the men novelists
this was practically assumed without comment; but our knowledge of
facts would seem to warrant the emphasis awarded the question by women
in their opening campaign of the pen. Here, as elsewhere, Miss Burney
was almost the first to teach us what women actually thought and felt:
in marked contrast to what it had been hitherto considered becoming for
them to express. She was, always, and everywhere, the mouthpiece of her
sex.

And, finally, because she was not an “instructed” or professional
writer, and had not studied good literature, we must recognise the
real, great drawback of _Camilla_: its grandiloquent style. Dr. Johnson
did much for English prose: his ultimate influence was towards vigour,
simplicity, clearness, and common sense. But he was personally pompous,
a whale in the dictionary; and those who copied him without discretion
only made themselves ridiculous. It would be easy enough to find
parallels in _Rasselas_, and elsewhere, for all the clumsy inversions
and stilted antitheses of _Camilla_. But here we can only regret the
blindness of ignorant hero-worship, and the natural, if foolish,
desire to please or flatter by imitation. Miss Burney wrote Johnsonese
fluently, and thereby ruined her natural powers. We cannot estimate, by
her foolishness, the influence of the Dictator.

Imitation has not been, fortunately, the besetting sin of women
novelists, and we may pass over this one “terrible example” without
further comment.


FOOTNOTES:

[2] The “_caro sposo_” of Mrs. Elton.




“CECILIA” TO “SENSE AND SENSIBILITY”

(1782-1811)


In considering the women writers immediately following Miss Burney, we
are confronted at the outset with a deliberate return to the methods of
composition in vogue before Richardson. If MRS. RADCLIFFE (1764-1823)
employs, as she does, Defoe-like minuteness of detail in description,
she entitles all her works “Romances,” and is fully justified in that
nomenclature. “It was the cry at the period,” says her biographer,
“and has sometimes been repeated since, that the romances of Mrs.
Radcliffe, and the applause with which they were received, were evil
signs of the times, and argued a great and increasing degradation of
the public taste, which, instead of banqueting as heretofore upon
scenes of passion, like those of Richardson, or of life and manners, as
in the pages of Smollett and Fielding, was now coming back to the fare
of the nursery, and gorged upon the wild and improbable fictions of an
over-heated imagination.”

Yet the anonymous author of the _Pursuits of Literature_ writes of some
sister-novelists: “Though all of them are ingenious ladies, yet they
are too frequently whining and frisking in novels, till our girls’
heads turn wild with impossible adventures. Not so the mighty magician
of _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, bred and nourished by the Florentine
muses in their sacred solitary caverns, amid the paler shrines of
Gothic superstition, and in all the dreariness of enchantment: a
poetess whom Ariosto would with rapture have acknowledged, as

                      ‘... La nudrita
  Damigella Trivulzia al sacro speco.’”--O.F. c. xlvi.

We fear to-day it would be difficult to find men “too mercurial to
be delighted” by Richardson, “too dull to comprehend” Le Sage, “too
saturnine to relish” Fielding, who would yet “with difficulty be
divorced from _The Romance of the Forest_”: since every one of us now

                  “boasts an English heart,
  Unused at ghosts or rattling bones to start.”

Jane Austen, of course, could never have written _Northanger
Abbey_ had she not enjoyed Mrs. Radcliffe; and we say at once that
those delightfully absurd chapters in which Catherine is allowed to
indulge in the most unfounded suspicions of General Tilney, are not
substantially unfair to the famous wife of William Radcliffe, Esq.;
as the artless conversations between Miss Morland and Miss Thorpe no
doubt justly reflect the deep interest excited by her stories in the
young and inexperienced. We do not readily, to-day, admire so much
“exuberance and fertility of imagination”: we have little, or no,
patience with “adventures heaped on adventures in quick and brilliant
succession, with all the hairbreadth charms of escape or capture,”
resembling some “splendid Oriental tale.”

But there can be no question that Mrs. Radcliffe achieved, in three
admirable examples, a perfectly legitimate attempt--the establishment
of that School of Terror inaugurated by no less brilliant a writer than
Horace Walpole (in his _Castle of Otranto_, 1764), and seldom revived
in England with any success.

It is true that very careful criticism of her methods may discover
their artificiality. “Her heroines voluntarily expose themselves to
situations which, in nature, a lonely female would certainly have
avoided. They are too apt to choose the midnight hour for investigating
the mysteries of a deserted chamber or secret passage, and generally
are only supplied,” like Mr. Pickwick, “with an expiring lamp when
about to read the most interesting documents.” But Emily St. Aubert
is not surely designed for comparison with even that “imbecility in
females” which Henry Tilney declared to be “a great enhancement of
their personal charms.” She is a heroine, not a woman; and if, unlike
Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe demands, and supplies, a material explanation
of all supernatural appearances, she yet allows her imagination to
wander freely over the realms of superstitious alarm, wherein the
_reason_ of woman cannot presumably hold sway. Certainly, had Emily
been less impulsive she would have missed many opportunities of proving
herself courageous.

I cannot myself, however, entirely avoid the impression that, in
their natural desire for classification, the critics have laid undue
stress on Mrs. Radcliffe’s use of Mystery. In the three hundred and
four, double column, pages of _Udolpho_ there are, besides occasional
voices, only three definite examples of this artifice--the waxen
figure behind the veil, the moving pall, and the disappearance of
Ludovico. The main plot is really no more than a spirited example of
the conventional Romance-plan (in the development of which she is
wittily said to have invented Lord Byron)--an involved narrative of
terrible sufferings and dangers incurred by an immaculate heroine, of
unmeasured tyranny and violence exerted by a melancholy villain, of
protracted misunderstandings concerning the gallant hero, with hurried
explanations all round in the last chapter to justify the wedding-bells.

Obviously there is no realism here. Everything depends upon conscious
exaggeration: whether it be a description of “the Apennines in their
darkest horrors,” or of a “gloomy and sublime” castle’s “mouldering
walls”; of crime indulged without restraint, or innocence unsullied by
the world. Montoni is not more inhuman in his passion than Emily in the
“tender elevation of her mind.”

For despite the most solemn warnings of St. Aubert (quoted above), his
Emily has far more sensibility than any of Miss Burney’s heroines,
and exemplifies the dangerous doctrine that “virtue and taste are
nearly the same.” She and Valancourt, indeed, were indifferent to “the
frivolities of common life”; their “ideas were simple and grand, like
the landscapes among which they moved”; their sentiments spontaneously
“arranged themselves” in original verse.

The fact is, that Scott’s startlingly generous estimate suggests
several sound conclusions: by dwelling upon the genuine poetical
feeling to be observed in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, and the sincerity
of her sympathy with nature. Though it has been remarked, with some
justice, that “as her story is usually enveloped in mystery, so there
is, as it were, a haze over her landscapes”; and that, “were six
artists to attempt to embody the Castle of Udolpho upon canvas, they
would probably produce six drawings entirely dissimilar to each other,
all of them equally authorised by the printed description.”

MRS. INCHBALD (1753-1821), on the other hand, followed the new school
in writing simple narratives of everyday life; but she produced little
more than a pale imitation of _The Man of Feeling_ (1771), by Henry
Mackenzie, the only masculine exponent of “sensibility”; though her
_Simple Story_ (1791) and _Nature and Art_ (1796) have been frequently
reprinted. She aimed at dissecting the human heart, as Richardson had
done; and there is, admittedly, a certain melodramatic, and almost
decadent, charm in her work.

MARIA EDGEWORTH (1767-1849) was, certainly, the most prominent of
our novelists between Fanny Burney and Jane Austen. Being a girl of
eleven when _Evelina_ was published, she lived to witness the triumph
of _Vanity Fair_. Living beyond her eighth decade, she produced over
sixty books. Having inspired Scott, on his own testimony, to the
production of the Waverley Novels, she actually inaugurated, promoted,
or established at least four forms of fiction more or less new to her
contemporaries.

Like Fanny Burney, she owed much to the enthusiasm and example of a
liberal-minded and cultured father: that Richard Lovell Edgeworth who
married several of the young persons whom the author of _Sandford and
Merton_ had educated for the honour of his own hand. He and Day were
notable scholastic reformers, and the influence of their innumerable
theories on life and the Pedagogue, largely imported from over the
Channel, is everywhere visible in Maria’s work.

Richard Lovell actually collaborated in the two volumes, inspired by
Rousseau’s _Émile_, on _Practical Education_ (1798), and supplied
forewords of edification to that marvellous series in which she first
proved the possibility of training the young idea by ethical storiettes
which were _not_ tracts. That most clumsily named _Parents’ Assistant_
(1801), the _Moral Tales_ of the same year, and the fascinating
_Frank_, are still nursery classics deserving of immortality. We may
not, to-day, accept without protest many of the “lessons” which they
were designed to enforce; but their sympathetic insight into the nature
of the child (with which recently we have been so much concerned), the
attractive simplicity and dramatic interest of the direct narrative,
set an example, from the very foundations of juvenile literature, which
has borne plentiful fruit.

It should be noticed, moreover, in this connection that Miss Edgeworth
had already produced a spirited defence of female education (_Letters
to Literary Ladies_, 1795); while she soon followed in the footsteps
of Fanny Burney by writing most lively satires on _fin de siècle_
Society, pointed with travesties of French “naturalism,” of which the
chief, perhaps, is _Belinda_, published in 1801; and further extended
the scope of the modern novel by the introduction of the finished Short
Story, under the attractive heading of _Tales of Fashionable Life_.

And, finally, besides again collaborating with her father in an _Essay
on Irish Bulls_ (1802), she produced that stimulating “Irish Brigade,”
which banished the “stage” Patrick from literature, introduced genuine
Celtic types, such as Coney, King of the Black Isles; and, by creating
the “national” novel, may be regarded as the legitimate parent of
what their illustrious author so modestly offered to the public as
“something of the same kind for his own country.”

Although just failing everywhere to reveal genius, Miss Edgeworth
reflects, with marvellous versatility, all the intellectual movements
of her generation. Adopting, and adapting to her own purposes, the
“form for women” set out by Miss Burney, she widened its application to
the discussion of social and political problems, and was the first to
make fiction a picture not only of life, but of its meaning. In fact
she forestalled no less for adults, than for the young, that vast array
of consciously didactic narrative which threatens, in our own time, to
bury beyond revival the original, and the supreme, inspiration of Art
in Literature--to give pleasure.

The humour, the pathos, the knowledge of the world, and, above all, the
common sense regulating Miss Edgeworth’s work, have not secured her as
permanent a popularity as she justly merits. But, if we do not, to-day,
frequently read even _Ormond_, _The Absentee_, or _Castle Rackrent_,
the occasions which gratefully recall their accomplished author to our
remembrance are most astonishingly frequent.

Of HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) most readers probably know even far less
than of Maria Edgeworth; and her work can only claim notice in this
place on account of the energy with which she followed Miss Edgeworth’s
lead in didactic fiction. Accustomed to the society of fashionable
blue-stockings (then a comparative novelty in London life), she exposed
their foibles with considerable humour in private correspondence; while
her plays were cheerfully staged by Garrick. But awakened, in later
life, to the sin of play-going, she became known for her vigorous
tracts (inspiring, by turns, the foundation of Sunday schools and of
the Religious Tract Society), until she published, at sixty-four, her
one novel entitled _Cœlebs in Search of a Wife_.

If this somewhat ponderous effusion does not altogether deserve the
satirical onslaught with which Sydney Smith heralded in the _Edinburgh_
its first appearance, we cannot claim for the author any particular
skill in construction or much fidelity to real life. It is, in fact, no
more than a “dramatic sermon,” and a sermon, moreover, in support of
narrow-minded sectarianism. As the reviewer informs us, “Cœlebs wants
a wife ... who may add materially to the happiness of his future life.
His first journey is to London, where, in the midst of the gay society
of the metropolis, of course, he does not find a wife; and his next
journey is to the family of Mr. Stanley, the head of the Methodists,
a serious people, where, of course, he does find a wife.” That is the
whole story. We must submit, in the meantime, to diatribes, pronounced
by the virtuous, against dancing, theatres, cards, assemblies, and
frivolous conversation, until we are in danger of losing all interest
in the persons of the tale.

It is enough for us, in fact, to mark a niche for Miss More in the
development of women’s work; only remembering the great service she
rendered her generation by a rarely sympathetic understanding of the
poor as individual human beings.




A STUDY IN FINE ART

(JANE AUSTEN, 1775-1817)


With Jane Austen we reach the centre of our subject: the establishment
of the Woman’s School, the final expression of domesticity. If not,
perhaps, more essentially feminine than Fanny Burney, she is more
womanly. The charming girlishness of _Evelina_ has here matured
into a grown-up sisterly attitude towards humanity, which, without
being either quite worldly or at all pedantic, is yet artistically
composed. Whether consciously or not, she has spoken--within her chosen
province--the last word for all women for all time. There is no comment
on life, no picture of manners, no detail of characterisation--either
humorous or sympathetic--which a man could have expressed in these
precise words. Woman is openly the centre of her world; and, if men are
more to her than fireside pets, she is only concerned with them as an
element (or rather the chief element) in the life of women.

The comparison, already instituted, between the man-made “feminines” of
_Pamela_ and _Clarissa Harlowe_ with Miss Burney’s “young ladies,” may
be applied to Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse with added emphasis
in every particular. The “woman” in them is more modern, nearer the
heart of humanity, but still spontaneously of that sex.

 “To say the truth,” confesses a contemporary reviewer, “we suspect
 one of Miss Austen’s great merits in our eyes to be the insight she
 gives us into the peculiarities of female character. Authoresses
 can scarcely ever forget the _esprit de corps_--can scarcely ever
 forget that they _are authoresses_. They seem to feel a sympathetic
 shudder at exposing naked a female mind. _Elles se peignent en
 buste_, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some
 interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out
 before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his
 own conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austen is free.
 Her heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can
 get them to acknowledge it. As liable ‘to fall in love first,’ as
 anxious to attract the attention of an agreeable man, as much taken
 with a striking manner, or a handsome face, as unequally gifted with
 constancy and firmness, as liable to have their affections biased by
 convenience or fashion, as we, on our part, will admit men to be.
 As some illustration of what we mean, we refer our readers to the
 conversation between Miss Crawford and Fanny (vol. iii. p. 102);
 Fanny’s meeting with her father (p. 199); her reflection after reading
 Edmund’s letter (p. 246); her happiness (good, and heroine though she
 be), in the midst of the miseries of all her friends, when she finds
 that Edmund has decidedly broken with her rival; feelings, all of
 them, which, under the influence of strong passion, must alloy the
 purest mind, but with which scarcely any _authoress_ but Miss Austen
 would have ventured to temper the œtherial materials of a heroine.”

Again, Miss Burney, as we have seen, had first made it possible for a
woman to write novels and be respectable. Yet even with her, authorship
was something of an adventure. Her earliest manuscripts were solemnly
burnt, as in repentance for frivolity, before her sorrowing sisters;
needlework was ordained every morning by a not tyrannical stepmother;
social duties occupied most afternoons and evenings. And if she _must_
write, Dr. Burney was always ready enough at dictation, and any lady
might act as secretary to such a father without reproach.

In the outside world, when her success was won, we can detect a
similar attitude. The authoress of _Evelina_, indeed, was taken up
everywhere and universally petted; but even literary Society never
regarded her quite as one of themselves. We feel that she was always
on show among them--a kind of freak, like the girl who cried to order
at dinner-parties without spoiling her complexion; welcomed, but not
admitted--as were actors, musicians, and others born and bred for the
amusement of the great.

She herself never resumed work for its own sake after the first flush
of popularity, in which she composed _Cecilia_. As lady-in-waiting,
bored by tiresome punctilio; as Madame D’Arblay, happy in simple
domesticity; her pen lay idle save when exercised by filial piety or
specifically to earn money. The later novels were pure hack-work,
obviously lacking in spontaneity.

It was reserved for Jane Austen, the daughter of a later generation,
though actually dying before Miss Burney, to establish finally the
position of woman as a professional novelist. True, she was even more
domestic than her predecessor, and entirely without what we should
regard as the necessary training or experience. Her family were seldom
aware of the time given to work, simply because it never occurred to
her that she might claim privacy or resent interruption. But they took
a keen interest in the results, and evidence exists in abundance of
their reading every completed volume with enthusiasm.

Of her own attitude towards her work, and of its reception with the
public, there can be no doubt. She always regarded herself, and was
regarded, as a professional. Circumstances might induce temporary
silence, because she was domestic, modest, and affectionate; but
if Jane Austen never complained--and we hear of no protest at the
extraordinary delay in their appearance--we may be quite sure the
novels were written for the public, by whom she felt confident one
day of being read. The style is obviously spontaneous, of which the
writing itself meant keen enjoyment; but the work was not done merely
for the pleasure of doing it. It was her life--not because of any
disappointment in love, if she experienced such, but because genius
such as hers demands self-expression and commands a hearing. From the
beginning, moreover, no one stopped to marvel that a woman could do so
well: they judged her as an artist among her peers.

Jane Austen had none of the advantages of Miss Burney, who knew
everybody, including the wig-maker next door. Apparently she took
little interest in politics or social problems; and our ideals of
culture suffer shock before her allusions to _The Spectator_, to
read and admire which she holds the affectation of a blue-stocking.
Admittedly she was a voracious novel-reader, but for her own pleasure
merely; certainly not with any idea of historical development or
artistic criticism. In all probability even her study of human nature
was spontaneous and unconscious.

Yet she expected to be taken seriously. Miss Burney had ventured an
apology for her art--a plea as woman to men which was daring enough for
her generation, but still an apology. Miss Austen, speaking as much for
the authoress of _Evelina_ as for herself, shows far more confidence.
She enlarges upon the skill and the labour involved in writing a
novel, for which _honour is due_.[3] What she demands has been given
her in full measure to overflowing. How closely her stories have
wound themselves about the hearts of every successive generation, it
were idle to measure or estimate. They are a part of our inheritance:
appreciation is reckoned a test of culture.

In the perfection, or development, of the methods inaugurated by Samuel
Richardson--particularly as applied by women-writers--she also stands
supreme. She entirely avoids criminals, melodrama, or any form of
excitement. She does not even demand sensibility from her common-sense
heroines.

While a woman was thus placing the corner-stone to the rise of domestic
realism, man accomplished a glorious revival of Romanticism. Scott was
born only four years before Jane Austen: _Waverley_ and _Mansfield
Park_ were published in the same year. Fortunately we are able to form
an accurate estimate of the impression her work produced upon her
great contemporary, since the earliest serious appreciation of Jane
was actually written by Sir Walter, and opens with a most instructive
comparison between the “former rules of the novel” and “a class of
fictions which has arisen,” as he expresses it, “almost in our times.”
The article appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, October 1815; and it is
very significant for us to notice that Scott places _Peregrine Pickle_
and _Tom Jones_ in the “old school,” dating the new style only “fifteen
or twenty years” back.

 “In its first appearance, the novel was the legitimate child of the
 romance; and though the manners and general turn of the composition
 were altered so as to suit modern times, the author remained fettered
 by many peculiarities derived from the original style of romantic
 fiction. These may be chiefly traced in the conduct of the narrative,
 and the tone of sentiment attributed to the fictitious personages. On
 the first point, although

  ‘The talisman and magic wand were broke,
  Knights, dwarfs, and genii vanish’d into smoke,’

 still the reader expected to peruse a course of adventures of a
 nature more interesting and extraordinary than those which occur in
 his own life, or that of his next-door neighbour. The hero no longer
 defeated armies by his single sword, clove giants to the chine, or
 gained kingdoms. But he was expected to go through perils by sea and
 land, to be steeped in poverty, to be tried by temptation, to be
 exposed to the alternate vicissitudes of adversity and prosperity,
 and his life was a troubled scene of suffering and achievement. Few
 novelists, indeed, adventured to deny to the hero his final hour of
 tranquillity and happiness, though it was the prevailing fashion never
 to relieve him out of his last and most dreadful distress until the
 finishing chapters of his history; so that although his prosperity in
 the record of his life was short, we were bound to believe it was long
 and uninterrupted when the author had done with him. The heroine was
 usually condemned to equal hardships and hazards. She was regularly
 exposed to being forcibly carried off like a Sabine virgin by some
 frantic admirer. And even if she escaped the terrors of masked
 ruffians, an insidious ravisher, a cloak wrapped forcibly around
 her head, and a coach with the blinds [down] driving she could not
 conjecture whither, she had still her share of wandering, of poverty,
 of obloquy, of seclusion, and of imprisonment, and was frequently
 extended upon a bed of sickness, and reduced to her last shilling
 before the author condescended to shield her from persecution. In
 all these dread contingencies the mind of the reader was expected
 to sympathise, since by incidents so much beyond the bounds of his
 ordinary experience, his wonder and interest ought at once to be
 excited. But gradually he became familiar with the land of fiction,
 the adventures of which he assimilated not with those of real life,
 but with each other. Let the distress of the hero or heroine be ever
 so great, the reader reposed an imperturbable confidence in the
 talents of the author, who, as he had plunged them into distress,
 would in his own good time, and when things, as Tony Lumkin says,
 were in a concatenation accordingly, bring his favourites out of all
 their troubles. Mr. Crabbe has expressed his own and our feelings
 excellently on this subject.

  ‘For should we grant these beauties all endure
  Severest pangs, they’ve still the speediest cure;
  Before one charm be wither’d from the face,
  Except the bloom which shall again have place,
  In wedlock ends each wish, in triumph all disgrace.
  And life to come, we fairly may suppose,
  One light bright contrast to these wild dark woes.’

 “In short, the author of novels was, in former times, expected to
 tread pretty much in the limits between the concentric circles of
 probability and possibility; and as he was not permitted to transgress
 the latter, his narrative, to make amends, almost always went beyond
 the bounds of the former. Now, although it may be urged that the
 vicissitudes of human life have occasionally led an individual through
 as many scenes of singular fortune as are represented in the most
 extravagant of these fictions, still the causes and personages acting
 on these changes have varied with the progress of the adventurer’s
 fortune, and do not present that combined plot, (the object of every
 skilful novelist), in which all the more interesting individuals of
 the dramatis personæ have their appropriate share in the action and in
 bringing about the catastrophe. Here, even more than in its various
 and violent changes of fortune, rests the improbability of the novel.
 The life of man rolls forth like a stream from the fountain, or it
 spreads out into tranquillity like a placid or stagnant lake. In
 the latter case, the individual grows old among the characters with
 whom he was born, and is contemporary,--shares precisely the sort
 of weal and woe to which his birth destined him,--moves in the same
 circle,--and, allowing for the change of seasons, is influenced by,
 and influences the same class of persons by which he was originally
 surrounded. The man of mark and of adventure, on the contrary,
 resembles, in the course of his life, the river whose mid-current
 and discharge into the ocean are widely removed from each other, as
 well as from the rocks and wild flowers which its fountains first
 reflected; violent changes of time, of place, and of circumstances,
 hurry him forward from one scene to another, and his adventures
 will usually be found only connected with each other because they
 have happened to the same individual. Such a history resembles an
 ingenious, fictitious narrative, exactly in the degree in which an
 old dramatic chronicle of the life and death of some distinguished
 character, where all the various agents appear and disappear as in the
 page of history, approaches a regular drama, in which every person
 introduced plays an appropriate part, and every point of the action
 tends to one common catastrophe.

 “We return to the second broad line of distinction between the novel,
 as formerly composed, and real life,--the difference, namely, of the
 sentiments. The novelist professed to give an imitation of nature, but
 it was, as the French say, _la belle nature_. Human beings, indeed,
 were presented, but in the most sentimental mood, and with minds
 purified by a sensibility which often verged on extravagance. In the
 serious class of novels, the hero was usually

  ‘A knight or lover, who never broke a vow.’

 And although, in those of a more humorous cast, he was permitted
 a licence, borrowed either from real life or from the libertinism
 of the drama, still a distinction was demanded even from Peregrine
 Pickle, or Tom Jones; and the hero, in every folly of which he might
 be guilty, was studiously vindicated from the charge of infidelity of
 the heart. The heroine was, of course, still more immaculate; and to
 have conferred her affections upon any other than the lover to whom
 the reader had destined her from their first meeting, would have been
 a crime against sentiment which no author, of moderate prudence, would
 have hazarded, under the old _régime_.

 “Here, therefore, we have two essential and important circumstances,
 in which the earlier novels differed from those now in fashion, and
 were more nearly assimilated to the old romances. And there can be no
 doubt that, by the studied involution and extrication of the story,
 by the combination of incidents new, striking and wonderful beyond
 the course of ordinary life, the former authors opened that obvious
 and strong sense of interest which arises from curiosity; as by the
 pure, elevated, and romantic cast of the sentiment, they conciliated
 those better propensities of our nature which loves to contemplate
 the picture of virtue, even when confessedly unable to imitate its
 excellences.

 “But strong and powerful as these sources of emotion and interest may
 be, they are, like all others, capable of being exhausted by habit.
 The imitators who rushed in crowds upon each path in which the great
 masters of the art had successively led the way, produced upon the
 public mind the usual effect of satiety. The first writer of a new
 class is, as it were, placed on a pinnacle of excellence, to which, at
 the earliest glance of a surprised admirer, his ascent seems little
 less than miraculous. Time and imitation speedily diminish the wonder,
 and each successive attempt establishes a kind of progressive scale
 of ascent between the lately deified author, and the reader, who had
 deemed his excellence inaccessible. The stupidity, the mediocrity,
 the merit of his imitators, are alike fatal to the first inventor, by
 showing how possible it is to exaggerate his faults and to come within
 a certain point of his beauties.

 “Materials also (and the man of genius as well as his wretched
 imitator must work with the same) become stale and familiar. Social
 life, in our civilized days, affords few instances capable of being
 painted in the strong dark colours which excite surprise and horror;
 and robbers, smugglers, bailiffs, caverns, dungeons, and mad-houses,
 have been all introduced until they cease to interest. And thus in the
 novel, as in every style of composition which appeals to the public
 taste, the more rich and easily worked mines being exhausted, the
 adventurous author must, if he is desirous of success, have recourse
 to those which were disdained by his predecessors as unproductive, or
 avoided as only capable of being turned to profit by great skill and
 labour.

 “Accordingly a style of novel has arisen, within the last fifteen
 or twenty years, differing from the former in the points upon which
 the interest hinges; neither alarming our credulity nor amusing our
 imagination by wild variety of incident, or by those pictures of
 romantic affection and sensibility, which were formerly as certain
 attributes of fictitious characters as they are of rare occurrence
 among those who actually live and die. The substitute for these
 excitements, which had lost much of their poignancy by the repeated
 and injudicious use of them, was the art of copying from nature as
 she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to
 the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world,
 a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking
 place around him.

 “In adventuring upon this task, the author makes obvious sacrifices,
 and encounters peculiar difficulty. He who paints from _le beau
 idéal_, if his scenes and sentiments are striking and interesting, is
 in a great measure exempted from the difficult task of reconciling
 them with the ordinary probabilities of life: but he who paints
 a scene of common occurrence, places his composition within that
 extensive range of criticism which general experience offers to
 every reader. The resemblance of a statue of Hercules we must take
 on the artist’s judgment; but every one can criticize that which is
 presented as the portrait of a friend, or neighbour. Something more
 than a mere sign-post likeness is also demanded. The portrait must
 have spirit and character, as well as resemblance; and being deprived
 of all that, according to Bayes, goes ‘to elevate and surprize,’ it
 must make amends by displaying depth of knowledge and dexterity of
 execution. We, therefore, bestow no mean compliment upon the author of
 _Emma_, when we say that, keeping close to common incidents, and to
 such characters as occupy the ordinary walks of life, she has produced
 sketches of such spirit and originality, that we never miss the
 excitation which depends upon a narrative of uncommon events, arising
 from the consideration of minds, manners and sentiments, greatly above
 our own. In this class she stands almost alone; for the scenes of Miss
 Edgeworth are laid in higher life, varied by more romantic incident,
 and by her remarkable power of embodying and illustrating national
 character. But the author of _Emma_ confines herself chiefly to the
 middling classes of society; her most distinguished characters do not
 rise greatly above well-bred country gentlemen and ladies; and those
 which are sketched with most originality and precision, belong to a
 class rather below that standard. The narrative of all her novels
 is composed of such common occurrences as may have fallen under the
 observation of most folks; and her dramatis personæ conduct themselves
 upon the motives and principles which the readers may recognize as
 ruling their own and that of most of their acquaintances.”

It is manifestly clear to us, then, from these passages, that Jane
Austen’s contemporaries were quite aware of her influence upon the
progress of fiction; and so generous a tribute, from one whose mighty
genius had set the current in other directions, must be accounted no
less honourable to the critic than to the criticised.

Four years after her death (_i.e._ six years later) the new school is
again applauded, in an admirable appreciation, by Archbishop Whately of
the posthumous _Persuasion_ and _Northanger Abbey_,[4] who dwells at
great length upon an important distinction between the “unnatural” and
the “merely improbable” in fiction.

Scott, of course, was always generous in criticism; and his striking
enthusiasm for Mrs. Radcliffe and the earlier women-writers, in his
_Lives of the Novelists_, reveals no less chivalrous gallantry than his
famous tribute to Miss Edgeworth. Still it was obviously necessary for
the great critic to _explain_ the grounds of his enthusiasm; and the
“more assured attitude of applause which Whateley was able to adopt,
after so short an interval, may serve to witness the advance which her
genius had achieved in the general estimate.”

We cannot avoid noticing, however, that neither of her contemporary
masculine critics seems to have been quite happy about the ideal of
womanhood which Jane Austen was certainly the first to introduce.
It required courage, indeed, to conceive of a heroine without
“sensibility,” and the creator of Marianne Dashwood must certainly
have been perfectly conscious of the omission. It happens that Scott
and Whateley were both thirty-four when these articles were written,
yet each complains, after his own fashion, of the calculating prudence
here revealed towards love and matrimony by the young ladies of the
piece. One would have supposed that neither of them was either old
enough to remember “sensibility” in real life, or young enough for idle
dreaming. Clearly, however, they _had_ a tender partiality for the old
type, probably shared by their readers; although both writers assure us
that young people in their day were not in fact at all addicted to the
sacrifice of all for love.

Scott is certainly not justified in stating that Elizabeth was led to
accept Darcy by discovering the grandeur of his estates; both because
such an attitude was inconsistent with her mental independence,
and because she herself jokingly suggests this explanation of the
remarkable change in her sentiments towards him, to tease her sister.

But, on the other hand, Jane Austen’s heroines may fairly be called
cool and calculating in comparison with the poetical maidens of
romance; and we have intentionally laboured this point at some length
in order to emphasise the thoroughness with which reformers in fiction
discarded the many artistic ornaments formerly used by story-tellers to
enhance the “pleasures of imagination.” Every convention of romance
was ruthlessly abandoned.

Later developments, as we shall see, introduced other elements which
partially supplied these omissions, and once more removed the novel
from pure realism; but it would almost seem as if Jane Austen had
deliberately set herself to prove how much it was possible to do
without. She admits neither unusual mixture of society, cultured
allusion, nor morbid or criminal impulses. Like her immediate
predecessors, she wilfully limits the variety of character-types by
strictly confining herself to her own narrow experience--her groups
of character are curiously similar, her plots repeat each other:
she discards every source of excitement from adventure, mystery, or
melodramatic emotion; and, finally, she denies the hero or heroine any
charm which may be derived from “sensibility” or romantic idealism.
Hers is realism,[5] naked and unashamed; challenging comparison
with life itself at every point, wholly dependent upon truthfulness
to nature. Her triumph is purely artistic: the absolute fitness of
expression to reveal insight, observation, sympathy, and humour; in
a simple narrative of parochial affairs, composed with rare skill,
faithfully reflecting everyday life and ordinary people.

From such commonplace material she has woven a spell over the
imagination and secured our warm interest in characters and episodes:
much as the simplicity of English landscapes will hold our affection
against the claims of nature’s grandest magnificence.

Detailed analysis of her six “studies from life” will serve only to
increase our wonder, and may be indulged without fear of reversed, or
even qualified, judgment.

Inevitably Jane Austen scribbled in girlhood--too busily, according
to her own judgment; but the printed fragments are _not_ specially
precocious, and we have no right to judge so careful an artist by work
she left unfinished or rejected with deliberation, however interesting
in itself.

As we all know, without having any clue to the explanation, she found
herself rather suddenly, while still a young woman; and did all her
work in two surprisingly brief periods--sharply separated, and each
responsible for three novels, two full length and one much shorter.
_Pride and Prejudice_, her first finished production, has every
appearance of maturity, and reveals the principal qualities which
characterised her to the end.

This novel, by many considered her greatest work, is primarily--like
_Evelina_ and _Cecilia_--a study in manners. Its aim is frankly to
amuse: the dominant note is irresponsible gaiety: the appeal is more
intellectual than emotional. Certainly we are interested in the story,
we have considerable affection for the characters: but it does not
excite passion, stimulate philosophic reflection, or stir imagination.
We find here no solutions to any vexed social problem. Past mistress
she is in the great art of story-telling, and a supreme stylist; yet
the authoress seems always content to skim the surface of things,
taking no thought of storm or fire below.

Miss Austen is no cynic: she certainly detests coarseness: yet Lydia’s
fall and its consequences, round which any modern novelist would have
centred the whole picture, is handled with something very like levity.
We can scarcely avoid amazement at the astonishingly vulgar attitude of
Mrs. Bennet or at Mary’s appalling priggishness on the occasion: but
such serious thoughts do not retain us long. In reality we are chiefly
interested in the possible effects of the girl’s folly upon her elder
sisters--will it, or will it not, separate them for ever from the men
they love? It is only a few quiet words of unselfish sympathy from
Jane, easily forgotten by most of us, that reveal the sentiments of the
authoress on such questions--with which, apparently, she holds that
fiction has little concern.

Primarily, however, we are attracted by _Pride and Prejudice_ as a
work of art. The unfailing humour and pointed wit, the marvellous
aptness of every polished phrase, hold us spellbound. The very first
sentence plunges us right into the heart of affairs: every incident or
dialogue, to the closing page, follows without pause or digression,
clear and firm as crystal. No trace of obscurity or hesitation blurs
the gay scene: every character is vividly, and individually, alive.
Yet how simple, almost commonplace, the material: how parochial the
outlook. We have here no mystery or melodrama, no psychology or local
colour. Miss Austen’s young ladies have absolutely no interests in life
except “the men,” however superior their manners and instincts to the
egregious frivolity of Mrs. Bennet. They are the normal heroines of a
conventional love-story; with the usual surroundings--a handsome hero
or two, some tiresome relatives, a confidante, a mild villain, and
varied comic relief. It has been said further that Miss Austen’s ideal
of a gentleman was deficient, since Darcy’s insolence betrays lack of
breeding: and, certainly, no Elizabeth of to-day would even temporarily
be deceived or attracted by so common an adventurer as Wickham.

At a first glance, indeed, it might seem that Miss Austen depended
entirely for her effects upon the creation of oddities. Reflecting on
Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins, touching perfection, we may well fancy
that we have surprised her secret--the impulse of her achievement,
the cause of our own enthusiasm. This, however, is but a hasty and
superficial impression. To begin with, she does not concentrate,
either in wit or humour, upon these figures of fun: and, in the second
place, she has powers quite other than the mirth-provoking. Though
grammatically not above reproach, she seems always to use the right
word by instinct, hitting every nail full on the head, never wasting a
syllable. The art nowhere obtrudes itself: her most skilfully polished
phrases appear natural and fluent, just what her characters must have
said in real life, to express precisely their thoughts and feelings.
Faultlessly neat and compact, her style is yet daring, vigorous, and
thoroughly alive.

Similar qualities appear in her delineation of character. Always
knowing her own mind, and going straight to the point: there is no
vagueness in outline, no uncertainty anywhere. Jane Bennet could never
have said or done just what came most naturally from Elizabeth; Darcy
shared no thought or deed with his best friend: less prominent persons
are as firmly, if less fully, individualised. The incidents, moreover,
however trifling, are well varied; the plot has ample movement--once
those concerned in it have won our sympathies. Assuredly Miss Austen’s
aim is not strenuous; but it is direct, vigorous, and clear-headed.
And where she aims, she hits.

_Sense and Sensibility_ reveals the very same method and the
reappearance of many similar types, applied to an entirely new story in
which no interest or situation repeats those of the earlier book. With
her daring indifference to originality in the mechanical construction
of a plot, Miss Austen once more centres her story round two sisters,
more widely diverse in temperament, indeed, than Jane and Elizabeth,
but no less everything to each other. Their mother, after the way of
parents in these novels, is as foolish as Mrs. Bennet, though far
more lovable. Willoughby is Wickham over again, with a fancy for
accomplishments. The tragi-comedy introduced by Lucy Steele, more
_essentially_ vulgar than any of the Bennets, Mrs. Palmer’s candid
frivolity, and the languid elegance of Lady Middleton (later perfected
in Lady Bertram), provide abundant occasion for laughter; though no
one figure of absurdity stands out so strongly as those of the earlier
novel. On the other hand, Miss Austen has nowhere exposed a character
more trenchantly by one short dialogue than in the discussion
between Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood about “what he could do for” his
widowed mother and orphaned sisters. It were surely impossible for
selfish hypocrisy to go further; and the subtle touches by which the
wife reveals herself leader of the pair, must afford us the keenest
enjoyment.

But this tale of Marianne and her Willoughby has one element entirely
absent from _Pride and Prejudice_, and never again attempted by Jane
Austen. It may be said to border on melodrama. The young people’s
ingenuous revels in emotion, whether of joy or grief, surprise one
in so balanced a writer, and reveal powers we should not otherwise
have suspected. Marianne, indeed, is the very personification of
that sensibility, so dear to “elegant females” of the old world, so
foreign to modern ideals. Having chosen her type, Miss Austen would
seem determined to show how far she could go in this direction without
distorting humanity. To the more conventional Miss Burney, sensibility
was a grace essential in heroines. She is its acknowledged exponent,
and compels us, despite prejudice, to recognise its real charm. But
neither Evelina nor Cecilia exhibits so much naïveté as Marianne, such
tempestuous abandon, such a fiery glow; yet we can read of her with
equal patience, we can love her no less. She is saved, for us, by her
genuine affection for “sensible” Eleanor, and her unselfish devotion
to a mother who seems even younger and more foolish than herself.
And Willoughby’s temperament fits her like a glove. His wooing, his
wickedness, and his repentance belong to a generation before Miss
Austen’s. Through this couple she triumphs in otherwise unexplored
regions.

_Northanger Abbey_ has very much the appearance of juvenile effort,
possibly recast in maturity. If not actually written in girlhood, it
must be regarded as the flower of a true holiday spirit, blossoming
in sheer fun. Fresh from the excited perusal of some novel by the
terrifying Anne Radcliffe, whom I believe Miss Austen enjoyed as
keenly as her own Catherine, she must have thrown herself into the
composition of this delightful parody, just to renew its thrills,
to linger over its absurdities. It is all pure farce, exaggeration
cheerfully unrestrained. The irrepressible Arabella belongs to Miss
Burney: her boasting brother should hang in the same gallery. Dear,
foolish Catherine’s idle imaginings about General Tilney were never
meant to resemble nature. Henry could scarcely have forgiven them, had
he taken her quite seriously. Moreover, having one parody in hand,
Miss Austen gaily embarks on yet another, no less irresponsible and
spontaneous. Catherine is Evelina in miniature; the real _ingénue_
whose country breeding exposes her to the most diverting distresses
in a Society amazingly mixed. Hovering between Thorpes and Tilneys,
like Evelina between Mirvans and Branghtons, she enters each circle
with the same innocence, enthusiasm, and naïveté. Miss Austen’s sly
boast of originality in allowing her heroine to fall in love without
stopping to ascertain “the gentleman’s feelings,” is but gentle
raillery at a similar presumption in Miss Burney. Certainly Orville, no
less than Tilney, was led on to serious thoughts of matrimony by the
simple-minded revelation of a pretty girl’s partiality.

Where a laugh lurks behind every sentence, we need not expect the
special “studies in humour” which stand out, everywhere, in the more
serious stories. Yet General Tilney (later perfected in Sir Walter
Elliot) is a finished sketch: while John Thorpe, who never opens his
lips without betraying himself; and Arabella, whether in pursuit of the
“two young men” or quizzing the naughty Captain, were hard to beat.

Nowhere, in all her work, has Miss Austen concentrated such pungent
sarcasm as in the condescending explanation of how much folly
reasonable men _prefer_ in lovely women.

 “The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already
 set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment
 of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the
 larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a
 great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them
 too reasonable, and too well informed themselves, to desire anything
 more in woman than ignorance.”

Do not the smooth words sting?

Approaching the second group, we look naturally, and not in vain, for
evidence of maturity and development. Miss Austen does not, in fact,
make any attempt to enlarge her sphere, to widen her outlook, to
handle more strenuous emotion. But her plots, still based on parochial
gossip, are more varied and complex: she works with a larger number
of characters; actually perfecting some types already familiar, and
introducing us to many a new acquaintance. Above all, her dramatis
personæ are no longer fixed and defined at their first entrance: they
grow with the story, often surprising us at last by qualities, no doubt
dormant from the beginning, and never strained or inconsistent, but
only possible to development through experience.

_Emma_ obviously invites comparison with _Pride and Prejudice_. The two
heroines have long shared almost equally the position of a most popular
favourite: one or other of the two books is almost universally judged
her best. The charms of Emma and Harriet are more _naturally_ diverse
because they are _not_ sisters: yet in the accidents of intimacy,
mutual confidence, and common interests they form a basis for the plot
precisely similar to that of the sisters in _Pride and Prejudice_ or
_Sense and Sensibility_, not greatly differing from those in _Mansfield
Park_ or _Persuasion_. Mr. Elton, the very pink of pretentious
vulgarity, recalls Lydia and Lucy Steele: her _caro sposo_ eclipses Mr.
Collins on his own ground. Miss Bates the garrulous, and Mr. Woodhouse
the fussy, varied examples of the eternal bore, are formidable rivals,
if not conquerors, of the inimitable Lady Catherine. Here we have
“characters” in greater abundance, almost more finished in fuller
detail.

Advance is more obvious, however, in the introduction of such
independent family groups as the Westons, the Martins, the John
Knightleys, and the Eltons: in the presence of a full-grown secondary
plot--“The Fairfax Mystery,” as we might call it: and in the heroine’s
_development_ through experience. A secret engagement is, in itself,
new kind of material for Jane Austen to handle: well calculated
to exercise her delicate command of dialogue. It lends particular
interest to this novel, however simple the intrigue compared with more
modern examples, however foreign to our own conceptions the “sense of
sin” thereby engendered in Jane Fairfax. Young Churchill’s spirited
conduct of the affair is a perpetual delight, certainly not least for
its unintentional humbling of “the great Miss Woodhouse”: though his
insinuations about Mr. Dixon (like Darcy’s rudeness) exceed the licence
permitted a gentleman, however spoilt and high-spirited.

We have already noted the popularity of Emma, but, in this _unlike_
Elizabeth, she has her detractors. Some find her too managing,
self-centred, and “superior” for charm. Admittedly she is a matchmaker,
far less refined than she imagines herself: her rudeness to Miss
Bates is difficult to pardon. But, as Knightley alone had the wit to
recognise, Harriet’s innocent folly encouraged her worst qualities,
and Emma’s repentance is sincere, bearing good fruit. To the end she
is herself indeed; but how different a self--standing witness to the
powers of character in bringing out the best of us. Having played
with fire, she learnt her lesson, and so we may leave her, no less
marvelling than she at the workings of what little Harriet was pleased
to call her heart; admiring, as all must, Jane Austen’s finished study
of that engaging “Miss.”

_Mansfield Park_, probably, is the least popular of the novels--on
account of its heroine. Fanny Price has her partisans, but can never
become a general favourite, until we again idealise humility in
woman. Accepting, without a murmur, the most unreasonable and most
exacting demands of all her “betters”; meekly grateful, to the point of
servility, if Edmund bestows on her a kind word; she stands before us
condemned by every code accepted to-day.

Yet Fanny, reversing the process in Emma, acquires self-confidence
with years, and actually learns to play the heroine in adversity. The
novel contains Miss Austen’s first, and last, picture of the great
world beyond parish boundaries: it deals, successfully, with greater
contrasts in social status than she ever attempted before or since.
Lady Bertram, no less than Mrs. Norris, fairly eclipses all former
achievements in character study.

Its crowded canvas, indeed, demands notice in detail. Sir Thomas
neglects his family much as did Mr. Bennet, and suffers more serious
punishment. The “villain” is replaced by Henry and Miss Crawford, of
the world, worldly: figuring at first as very wholesome instruments
of distraction to a stiff family circle; but ingeniously convicted,
in touch with realities, of serious moral depravity. Their presence,
however, reveals new power in the authoress, and considerably enlivens
the scene. They do much towards the development of Fanny.

No two characters, on the other hand, could be more profoundly
diverse than those of Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris: yet they fit each
other without friction, and it were hard indeed to say which is more
perfectly drawn. A woman more utterly devoid of feeling or lacking in
common sense than the former, it is impossible to conceive. The mere
hint of responsibility towards anyone or anything would have shattered
her nerves completely; and no emergency, of joy or grief, ever taught
her to face the exertion of making up her own mind for herself on the
most trivial question. Yet there is no exaggeration. She is perfectly
natural, not without charm, an ornament to the family circle whom
all would miss. For Mrs. Norris, the intolerable busybody, it has
been suggested that Miss Austen owed something directly to personal
experience. Was this her revenge for much silent endurance? Certainly
so much concentrated scorn, so stern a portrait seems to imply animus.
Gentle, tender, and sympathetic by nature, was she at times lashed to
fury by the cruel inanity of village types? Mrs. Elton, Miss Bates, and
Mr. Collins may, in a less degree, have been similarly inspired. If it
be so, verily they have their reward.

The central motive in _Mansfield Park_ is more complex than heretofore:
its scenes more varied. The whole episode of Fanny’s visit to her
struggling parents, and their squalid home, introduces an aspect
of life elsewhere ignored, shows us humanity unrefined. The work is
alive and vigorous, not altogether foreign to modern realism. Coming,
moreover, from such uncongenial, and to them unfamiliar, surroundings;
bred to hard work and hard times; cousin Fanny brings a new element
into the lives of the elegant Miss Bertrams, our usual couple of
sisters; who, again, are destined to further awakening from the manners
and experience of Mary Crawford.

Finally, we have here the nearest approach to a so-called “social
problem” ever handled by Jane Austen, and a thoroughly serious picture
of punishment. It may seem hard to all of us, and modern casuists would
certainly declare it unjust, that Maria should suffer so much more
than Julia, who had no more principle, but less opportunity. In this
matter, however, Miss Austen is uncompromising. Of the two Maria was
more spoilt--by Mrs. Norris, more exposed to temptation; and actually
committed sin. _Therefore she must expect punishment._ Julia proved
herself equally cold-hearted and selfish; but by luck, neither through
wisdom nor goodness, she kept within the code--and was forgiven.

Miss Austen does not let off the man altogether; for it is quite clear
that Henry Crawford lost Fanny, and, with her, his best chance for
happiness. But Maria lost everything; and so, the authoress seems
to imply, it must be always. There is no hint of mercy, no chance
for retrievement, in one of the sternest decrees of Fate that could
overtake a woman--perpetual imprisonment with her aunt!

 “Shut up together with little society, on one side no affection,
 on the other no judgment, it may reasonably be supposed that their
 tempers became their mutual punishment.”

Justice, indeed, hath fair play with Mrs. Norris. May we not
whisper--Poor Maria!

_Persuasion_, Miss Austen’s last work and perhaps her finest, reveals
maturity in other ways. No longer than _Northanger Abbey_, it has
neither the complexity nor the crowded canvas distinguishing others
of the second group. It is written throughout in a minor key, without
one outstanding comic “character.” But, on the other hand, its
construction is singularly compact, its emotions have a new depth,
sincerity, and tenderness. Anne Elliot can never rival Elizabeth or
Emma; though she is no less “superior” to her own family, and has in
reality more character. Here our appreciation and our sympathies are
emotional rather than intellectual. _We feel with her_ far more than
with them. Though never recognised in her own circle, as were all
Miss Austen’s heroines save Fanny Price, she dominates the story more
than any. _Persuasion_, in fact, is a study in character, such as its
authoress had never before attempted. No more, if indeed actually less,
sensational than its predecessors, the whole scheme moves below the
surface. It holds us more by feeling and atmosphere than by incident.
We experience a similar delight in the perfectly turned phrases, the
finished dialogue, and the neat characterisation; but here are no
figures of fun, no animated social functions, no clash of types. We may
smile, indeed, at Sir Walter Elliot or at the family of Uppercross; but
the humour, however subtle and permeating, does not anywhere prevail
over deeper emotion.

Certainly we note that Miss Austen still seeks out no new material,
depends on no more startling situation. Anne’s happiness and misery
alike arise, as did Jane’s and Elizabeth’s, from a refinement to which
every other member of her family was absolutely blind. The natural
understanding between two sisters is destroyed, as between Julia and
Maria, by rivalry for the one eligible visitor to the neighbourhood;
though here with no permanently disastrous results. The naïvely
conceived villain of the first group has become--again as in _Mansfield
Park_--an accomplished man of the world, with no sister indeed to
further his perfectly honourable designs on the heroine, but, in the
last event, not lacking a female accomplice. Its most striking effect
in local colour, the glowing picture of naval types, was foreshadowed
in William Price: though Admiral and Mrs. Croft admittedly stand
high in Miss Austen’s gallery of character-studies. Society, as in
_Northanger Abbey_, is located at Bath.

Yet nowhere has she attempted, with any approach to a like depth of
feeling or earnestness, so much philosophy on life, so searching
an analysis of human nature, as in the remarkable conversation
on faithfulness, as severally exhibited by men and women, which
artistically produces a permanent understanding between hero and
heroine.

 “Oh!” cried Anne eagerly to Captain Harville, “I hope I do justice
 to all that is felt by you and by those who resemble you. God forbid
 that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of
 my fellow-creatures. I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to
 suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman.
 No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your
 married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and
 to every domestic forbearance, so long as--if I may be allowed the
 expression--so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you
 love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own
 sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it) is that of
 loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”

This is the text of the whole novel, woven with subtlety into its very
fabric, inspiring each thought, each word, though never obtruding.
_Persuasion_ is neither a sermon nor a pamphlet. Its author assuredly
holds no brief for woman, brings no charge against man. Yet here she
speaks for her sex. Of what she has seen and felt it would appear that
she could no longer remain silent.

Jane Austen reveals herself in her last message to posterity.

  _Sense and Sensibility_, 1811.
  _Pride and Prejudice_, 1813.
  _Mansfield Park_, 1814.
  _Emma_, 1816.
  _Northanger Abbey_, 1818.
  _Persuasion_, 1818.


FOOTNOTES:

[3] Both passages are quoted on page 129.

[4] Also in the _Quarterly_, 1821.

[5] It is scarcely necessary, perhaps, to remark that the word
“realism” is used, here and elsewhere, without any reference to the
limited significance it has recently acquired. Realism, of course,
really means truthfulness to life, _including_ imagination, faith,
poetry, and the ideal; and _not_ a photographic reproduction of certain
unpleasant, more or less abnormal, phases of human nature.




A “MOST ACCOMPLISHED COQUETTE”


In spite of the almost universal inclination to pass over Jane Austen’s
“minor” works without serious comment, we are ourselves strongly
disposed to consider _Lady Susan_ of considerable importance.

The early compositions, if sprightly, are not precocious: the cancelled
chapter of _Persuasion_--replaced only eleven months before her death
by chaps. x. and xi.--remains an interesting record of what would
have fully satisfied a less careful artist; and the description--with
extracts--which Mr. Austen-Leigh has given us of the novel begun on
27th January 1817 and continued until the 17th of March,[6] does not
contain body enough for confident anticipation: _i.e._ of detail. There
is, however, no reason for dreading any decline in artistic power.

Water-marks of 1803 and 1804 on the original manuscript prove _The
Watsons_ to have been written between her two periods of productive
activity; and it is not likely that definite evidence will now
transpire in explanation of its having been left unfinished: unless we
accept Mr. Austen-Leigh’s somewhat fastidious conclusion--

 “that the author became aware of the evil of having placed her heroine
 too low, in such a position of poverty and obscurity as, though not
 necessarily connected with vulgarity, has a sad tendency to degenerate
 into it; and therefore, like a singer who has begun on too low a
 note, she discontinued the strain. It was an error of which she was
 likely to become more sensible, as she grew older, and saw more of
 society: certainly she never repeated it by placing the heroine of any
 subsequent work under circumstances likely to be unfavourable to the
 refinement of a lady.”[7]

Her nephew further remarks that “it could not have been broken up for
the purpose of using the materials in another fabric”; although, in his
opinion, a resemblance between Mr. Robert Watson and Mr. Elton is “very
discernible.” We might also observe that Mr. Watson appears to have
taken his “basin of gruel” as regularly as Mr. Woodhouse; while, on
the other hand, Lord Osborne’s affected superiority to dancing recalls
Darcy. Miss Watson’s theories on life and marriage are particularly
characteristic:

 “I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school. _I_ have
 been at school, Emma, and know what a life they lead; _you_ never
 have. I should not like marrying a disagreeable man any more than
 yourself; but I do not think there _are_ many very disagreeable men; I
 think I could like any good-humoured man with a comfortable income. I
 suppose my aunt brought you up to be rather refined.”

Emma Watson, in fact, like all Jane Austen’s heroines, shines by
_comparison_ with the rest of her family.

_Lady Susan_, unlike any of the stories mentioned above, is obviously
complete and finished. “Her family have always believed it to be an
early production”; but we cannot conjecture why it was laid aside
and never published by her. It is, however, an “experiment”--never
repeated; and very possibly Jane Austen did not feel moved to revise
what evidently had not satisfied her own standard of perfection.

For us, however, its striking dissimilarity to the six recognised
“works,” and its unique position in the development of fiction, are of
peculiar interest. To begin with, it belongs to the old “picaresque”
school of fiction, seldom popular in England, though practised with
considerable vigour by Defoe, and _once_ revived by Thackeray in a work
of genius--_Barry Lyndon_.

It may, perhaps, be considered an exaggeration to call the heroine a
villain; and certainly Jane Austen entirely avoids the sordid material
of criminal adventure (_not_ scorned by Thackeray); which is the
recognised foundation of ordinary picaresque work. But the essential
characteristic remains prominent. The good people are comparatively
colourless; our interest centres around _Lady Susan_, and it is on her
that the author has devoted her most careful work. Moreover, it should
not be overlooked that _Lady Susan_ does contemplate, and actually
instigate--in refined language--a course of action which may fairly be
called criminal. The confidante, Mrs. Johnson--a recognised appendage
to villainy--receives the following significant hint:

 “Mainwaring is more devoted to me than ever; and were we at liberty, I
 doubt if I could resist even matrimony offered by _him_. This event,
 if his wife live with you, it may be in your power to hasten. The
 violence of her feelings, which must wear her out, may easily be kept
 in irritation. _I rely on your friendship for this._”

The quiet audacity of this paragraph is really astounding; and just
because no other word in all the forty-one letters contains so much as
a hint at anything beyond unblushing effrontery and reckless lying, we
regard it, without hesitation, as the keynote of Jane Austen’s method,
and the declaration of her aim. Only a villain could possibly have
written these words; only a genius could have refrained from giving her
away on some other occasion.

Superficially, Lady Susan is no worse than a merry widow, given to
man conquest, perfectly indifferent--if not contemptuous--towards the
wives or the fiancées of her victims. In this matter, indeed, her
enemies complain that “she does not confine herself to that sort of
honest flirtation which satisfies most people, but aspires to the more
delicious gratification of making a whole family miserable.” During
the first months of widowhood she had determined on “discretion” and
being “as quiet as possible”:--“I have admitted no one’s attentions but
Mainwaring’s. I have avoided _all general flirtation_ whatever; I have
distinguished no creature besides, of all the numbers resorting hither,
except Sir John Martin, on whom I bestowed a little notice, in order
to detach him from Miss Mainwaring; but, if the world could know my
motive _there_ they would honour me”;--the fact being that she wanted
the man for her daughter.

This “most accomplished coquette in England” is described with some
fullness by a sister-in-law who had every reason to think ill of her.

 “She is really excessively pretty; however you may choose to question
 the allurements of a lady no longer young, I must, for my own part,
 declare that I have seldom seen so lovely a woman as Lady Susan.
 She is delicately fair, with fine grey eyes and dark eyelashes; and
 from her appearance one would not suppose her more than five and
 twenty; though she must in fact be ten years older. I was certainly
 not disposed to admire her, though always hearing she was beautiful;
 but I cannot help feeling that she possesses an uncommon union of
 symmetry, brilliancy, and grace. Her address to me was so gentle,
 frank, and even affectionate, that, if I had not known how much she
 has always disliked me for marrying Mr. Vernon, and that we had never
 met before, I should have imagined her an attached friend. One is
 apt, I believe, to connect assurance of manner with coquetry, and to
 expect that an impudent address will naturally attend an impudent
 mind; at least, I myself was prepared for an improper degree of
 confidence in Lady Susan; but her countenance is absolutely sweet,
 and her voice and manner winningly mild. I am sorry it is so, for
 what is this but deceit? Unfortunately, one knows her too well. She
 is clever and agreeable, has all that knowledge of the world which
 makes conversation easy, and talks very well, with a happy command of
 language, which is too often used, I believe, to make black appear
 white.”

Such being the lady’s own manners and sentiments, we are fully prepared
for her satirical references to her daughter:

 “I never saw a girl of her age”--she was sixteen--“bid fairer to be
 the sport of mankind. Her feelings are tolerably acute, and she is so
 charmingly artless in their display as to afford the most reasonable
 hope of her being ridiculous, and despised by every man who sees her.
 Artlessness will never do in love-matters; and that girl is born a
 simpleton who has it either by nature or affectation.”

It is hardly necessary to add that Lady Susan has no desire, or
ambition, in life beyond universal admiration. She is “tempted” indeed,
but does not on one occasion lose her head: and we cannot feel that
she was even exactly pre-eminent in her practice. It does not appear
that she quite succeeded in ever enjoying the fruits of victory. Miss
Austen has not drawn for us a really “cunning” coquette. Lady Susan
subdued men, but she could seldom hold them; and on no occasion does
she conquer “circumstances,” _i.e._, other women.

There may be, obviously, three explanations of this fact. Either Jane
Austen was lacking in the more robust humour of Thackeray and his
predecessors, who seem to revel in the gaiety of the heartless; or she
recognised the limitations of country life, where the artificial can
never prosper for long; or she had, in her own quiet way, too much
principle to countenance, even in fiction, any permanent happiness for
the wicked.

However it be, the result is unique. Lady Susan stands alone as a
heroine. As we have seen, the full depths of her criminality lurk
beneath the surface: her power is rather hinted at than described. It
is only on looking back over the accumulation of slight touches and
chance words that we realise her astounding insincerity, her absolute
lack of feeling, or the brilliance of her superficial attractiveness.
It is a very short book, containing few characters and practically no
events; yet we are startled, on reflection, at its unsparing picture
of the incalculable amount of mischief that may be done by sheer
empty-headedness, entirely without strong feeling or passion; and of
the incredible isolation in which such a character must always live.

Lady Susan injures, in some degree, literally every person named
in the whole story. She has not a friend in the world. In reality,
perhaps, the last consideration indicates most clearly the virtue
in Miss Austen’s characterisation. It is not once even mentioned,
and, consequently, arouses no remark. We must deduct from it our own
observation. But, inasmuch as never for one instant does a single
thought for anyone but herself cross the mind of Lady Susan, so never
does anyone else show one spark of affection for her. Mrs. Johnson,
obviously, was governed by interested motives, and frankly abandons her
at the first serious danger of “the consequences” to herself. The kind
of devotion she inspired in men had no affinity to friendship, respect,
consideration, or unselfishness. The closing scene is described with
a cutting brevity, that recalls Miss Austen’s dismissal of Maria
Rushworth and Mrs. Norris.

She married the man designed for her daughter--for an establishment:
“Whether Lady Susan was or was not happy in her second choice, I
do not see how it can ever be ascertained; for who would take her
assurance of it on either side of the question? The world must judge
from probabilities; she had nothing against her but her husband, and
her conscience.”

As we have noticed before, Miss Austen seldom obtrudes her opinions,
but they are occasionally implied. And, on such occasions, they are
unhesitating. We find in her no doubt, no compromise--we might almost
say no charity--about a few questions of ultimate morality.

On the whole, however, we cannot claim for _Lady Susan_ all those
perfections of style associated with the genius of its author.
Save for a few turns of phrase, of which we have quoted the most
significant, it has little of her pointed epigram or subtle humour.
The language is equally finished and inevitable, but there is neither
sparkle nor gaiety. We miss the dialogue and the delicate variety in
characterisation. It would be hazardous, indeed, to suppose that anyone
could have “discovered” Jane Austen from Lady Susan; but, knowing her
other work, we can detect the mastery.

In conclusion, it is worth noticing that she has here given us some
insight into the constancy of man.

Reginald de Courcy had been a victim of Lady Susan’s. After her second
marriage, her daughter

 “Frederika was fixed in the family of her uncle and aunt till such
 time as Reginald de Courcy could be talked, flattered, and finessed
 into an affection for her which, allowing leisure for the conquest
 of his attachment to her mother, for his abjuring all future
 attachments, and detesting the sex, _might be reasonably looked for
 in a twelvemonth_. Three months might have done it in general, but
 Reginald’s feelings were no less lasting than lively.”

It will be remembered that Miss Austen is less explicit about Edmund
Bertram:

 “I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may
 be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable
 passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much
 as to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe
 that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should
 be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss
 Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could
 desire.”

On the other hand, Marianne Dashwood required two years to conquer
her devotion to Willoughby in favour of Colonel Brandon; but then Miss
Austen has claimed for her sex, through Anne Elliot, “the privilege of
loving longest, when existence, or when hope, is gone.”


FOOTNOTES:

[6] She died 18th July 1817.

[7] It may surely be questioned whether this remark quite allows for
the home of Fanny Price.




PARALLEL PASSAGES


It would be difficult, if not impossible, to name an author of genius
even approximately equal to Jane Austen’s who owed so little as she to
any deliberate study of literary models or conscious attention to the
laws of style. Concerning her personal character and private interests
we know, indeed, surprisingly little; but it is certain, on the one
hand, that she was not in touch with the men and women of letters among
her contemporaries, and, on the other, that her family circle did not
practise the gentle art of criticism. The further assumption that she
had thought little, and read less, about the theory of her art, is
justified by the absence of any such references in her letters, and by
her simple ideas of construction, as developed in the advice to a young
relative who was attempting to follow her example:

 “You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly
 into such a spot as is the delight of my life. Three or four families
 in a country village is the very thing to work on.”

Jane Austen, however, read novels with keen enjoyment: _Northanger
Abbey_ is in part an avowed burlesque of Mrs. Radcliffe, and we can
discover, in the language of Shakespearean commentary, the “originals”
for several of her plots and persons in the works of Fanny Burney.

Such an investigation, indeed, seems to have been almost courted by the
author herself when she borrowed a title from a chance phrase of her
sister-novelist’s, for a story with a somewhat similar plot, developed,
among other coincidences, in two closely parallel scenes. When at
length, after a series of cruel misfortunes, the hero and heroine
of _Cecilia_ were permitted to console each other, an onlooker thus
pointed the moral of their experience: “The whole of this unfortunate
business has been the result of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.”

There must have been a day, about twenty years after they were written,
when these words assumed, in Jane Austen’s eyes, a sudden significance.
She had read them before, probably many times, but on this occasion
they proved no less than an inspiration. Within her desk, on which
perhaps the favourite volume was then lying, lay the neatly written
manuscript of a tale constructed, in some measure, on the lines of
this very _Cecilia_. She had called it _First Impressions_. Would
not _Pride and Prejudice_ be a better name? It was certainly a happy
thought.[8]

Now Delvile, like Darcy, fell in love against his family instincts,
and, with an equally offensive condescension, discoursed at length on
his struggles between pride and passion to the young lady he desired to
honour with his affection. He, too, resisted long, yielded in the end,
and was forgiven. His mother’s appeal to Cecilia was as violent, and
almost as impertinent, as Lady Catherine’s to Elizabeth.

A close comparison of these two parallel scenes will serve at once to
show Jane Austen’s familiarity with the copy and her originality of
treatment. Darcy, like Delvile, is not “more eloquent on the subject of
tenderness than of pride.” But he has overcome his scruples and offers
his hand, in confidence of its being accepted, to one who dislikes and
despises him. Delvile, on the other hand, wishes merely to explain
the reasons that have induced him to deny himself the dangerous solace
of the “society” of one whom he believes to be entirely indifferent to
him, and to excuse the occasional outbursts of tenderness into which he
has been betrayed in unguarded moments. He does not complain of “the
inferiority of her connections,” but of the clause in her uncle’s will
by which her future husband is compelled to take her name. Cecilia
had been puzzled by his uncertain behaviour, but, believing him only
cautious from respect to his parents, had permitted herself to love him.

Mrs. Delvile again, like Lady Catherine, based her appeal on the
“honour and credit” of the young man she was so anxious to release; but
her insolence was tempered by affection, and disguised by high-sounding
moral sentiments. Cecilia was softened, as Elizabeth had not been,
by a sense of gratitude for past kindness and by a strained notion
of respect for the older lady. Mrs. Delvile, except in her pride, is
intended to inspire us with genuine respect; Lady Catherine is always
treated with amused contempt.

There are other instances--less familiar, but equally striking--in
which Miss Austen made use, in her own inimitable fashion, of
characters, phrases, and situations in _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_.

Mr. Delvile, the pompous and foolish man of family, reappears in Sir
Walter Elliot of _Persuasion_, and General Tilney of _Northanger
Abbey_. Cecilia could never determine “whether Mr. Delvile’s
haughtiness or his condescension humbled her most,” and he became
“at length so infinitely condescending, with intention to give her
courage, that he totally depressed her with mortification and chagrin.”
Catherine Morland always found that “in spite of General Tilney’s
great civilities to her, in spite of his thanks, invitations, and
compliments, it had been a release to get away from him.”

Cecilia’s friendship for Henrietta Belfield resembles Emma’s for
Harriet Smith. She was ever watching the state of her young friend’s
heart; now soliciting her confidence, and again, from motives of
prudence, rejecting it. For a time both girls are in love with the
hero, and Henrietta dreams as fondly and as foolishly over Delvile’s
imagined partiality as Harriet did over Knightley’s. Neither heroine
has any thought of resigning her lover to her friend, or “of resolving
to refuse him at once and for ever, without vouchsafing any motive,
because he could not marry them both.”

The following conversation between Mr. Gosport and Miss Larolles
recalls Miss Steele’s persistence in laughing at herself about the
doctor (_Sense and Sensibility_), and Tom Bertram’s affected belief
that Miss Crawford was “quizzing him and Miss Anderson” (_Mansfield
Park_).

Gosport attacks Miss Larolles on a rumour now current about her, and,
after some skirmishing, confesses to having heard that “she had left
off talking.”

 “‘Oh, was that all,’ cried she, disappointed. ‘I thought it had been
 something about Mr. Sawyer, for I declare I have been plagued so about
 him, I am quite sick of his name.’

 “‘And for my part, I never heard it! So fear nothing from me on his
 account.’

 “‘Lord, Mr. Gosport, how can you say so! I am sure you must know about
 the festino that night, for it was all over the town in a moment.’

 “‘What festino?’

 “‘Well, only conceive how provoking! Why, I know nothing else was
 talked of for a month.’”

This is the Miss Larolles who haunted the mind of Anne Elliot, in
_Persuasion_, when she moved to the end of a form at the concert, in
order to be sure of not missing Captain Wentworth:

 “She could not do so without comparing herself with Miss Larolles,
 the inimitable Miss Larolles, but still she did it, and not with much
 happier effect.”

Here is the passage in question: “Do you know,” says Miss Larolles,

 “Mr. Meadows has not spoke one word to me all the evening! though I am
 sure he saw me, for _I sat at the outside_ on purpose to speak to a
 person or two, that I knew would be strolling about; for if one sits
 on the inside there’s no speaking to a creature you know; so I never
 do it at the opera, nor in the boxes at Ranelagh, nor anywhere. It’s
 the shockingest thing you can conceive, to be made sit in the middle
 of these forms, one might as well be at home, for nobody can speak to
 one.”

The singularly unselfish affection of Mrs. and Miss Mirvan for Evelina,
never clouded by envy of her superior attractions, finds its echo in
the experience of Jane Fairfax:

 “The affection of the whole family, the warm attachment of Miss
 Campbell in particular, was the more honourable to each party, from
 the circumstance of Jane’s decided superiority, both in beauty and
 acquirements.”

When Evelina is in great trouble, and the “best of men,” Mr. Villars,
is penetrated to the heart by the sight of her grief, he can think of
no better consolation than:

 “My dearest child, I cannot bear to see thy tears; for my sake dry
 them: such a sight is too much for me: _think of that_, Evelina, and
 take comfort, I charge thee.”

With similar masculine futility the self-centred Edmund Bertram
attempts to soften the grief of his dear cousin:

 “No wonder--you must feel it--you must suffer. How a man who had once
 loved, could desert you. But yours--your regard was new compared
 with----Fanny, _think of me_.”

Many a reader, doubtless, has, with Elizabeth Bennet, “lifted up his
eyes in amazement” at the platitudes of Mary on the occasion of Lydia’s
elopement, without suspecting that offensive young moralist of having
culled her phrases from the earlier novelist. “Remember, my dear
Evelina,” writes Mr. Villars, “nothing is so delicate as the reputation
of a woman; _it is at once the most beautiful and most brittle_ of all
human things.” Now Mary was “a great reader and made extracts.” She
evidently studied the art of judicious quotation: “Unhappy as the
event must be for Lydia,” says this astounding sister,

 “we may draw from it this useful lesson: that loss of virtue in a
 female is irretrievable--that one false step involves her in endless
 ruin--that her reputation _is no less brittle than it is beautiful_,
 and that she cannot be too guarded in her behaviour towards the
 undeserving of the other sex.”

The general resemblance of Catherine Morland’s situation to Evelina’s
may have been unconscious, but was scarcely, we think, accidental. In
_Northanger Abbey_, as in no other of Miss Austen’s novels, though
in all Miss Burney’s, the heroine is detached from her ordinary
surroundings and introduced to society under the inefficient protection
of foolish acquaintances. Like Evelina, she finds in the great world
much cause for alarm and anxiety, though, like her, she has the hero
for partner at her first ball. She, too, is frequently tormented by
the differences between her aristocratic and her vulgar friends. Henry
Tilney’s attitude towards her, on the other hand, is very similar to
Lord Orville’s towards Evelina. He can read her like an open book,
and his discovery of her suspicions about his father is as ingenious
and as delicately revealed as Orville’s generous chivalry to Evelina
at the ridotto. Indeed, had Fanny Burney been more daring she would
have confessed that Orville’s affection for Evelina, like Tilney’s for
Catherine,

 “originated in nothing better than gratitude; or in other words, that
 a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of
 giving her a serious thought.”

The admiration which Evelina expressed with so much naïveté and
earnestness to her guardian must have betrayed itself in her looks
and conversation. Orville’s heart was won by unconscious flattery,
though Miss Burney herself was too conventional to admit it. She left
the conception and its defence to another. “It is a new circumstance
in romance,” writes Miss Austen, “and dreadfully derogatory of an
heroine’s dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a
wild imagination will at least be all my own.”

We can scarcely avoid wondering whether Miss Austen remembered Sir
Clement Willoughby when she decided upon the name of Marianne’s
devoted, but faithless, lover. The two men bear somewhat similar
relations to hero and heroine.

In one of her rare outbursts of self-confidence with the reader,
Miss Austen appears to put _Camilla_ on a level with _Cecilia_; and
Thorpe’s abuse of this novel in _Northanger Abbey_ must be interpreted
as her own indirect praise, for that youth is never allowed to open
his lips without exposing himself to our derision. It is immaterial to
our purpose that posterity has accepted his verdict rather than Miss
Austen’s. Her name appears among the subscribers to _Camilla_, and she
was loyal to it without an effort. Here she was not likely to find much
available material; but the conduct of Miss Margland towards Sir Hugh
Tyrold and his adopted children may have suggested some traits in Mrs.
Norris, and Mr. Westwyn’s naïve enthusiasm for his son bears a strong
resemblance to that of Mr. Weston[9] for the inevitable Frank Churchill.

Miss Bingley made herself ridiculous by her definition of an
accomplished woman as one who “must have a thorough knowledge of music,
singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages.” The germ of the
satire appears in the experiences of Miss Burney’s _The Wanderer_, and
in an allusion to the prevalent idea of feminine culture in _Camilla_:

 “A little music, a little drawing, and a little dancing, which should
 all be but slightly pursued, to distinguish a lady of fashion from an
 artist.”

So writes Jane Austen, again, in _Lady Susan_:

 “Not that I am an advocate for the prevailing fashion of acquiring a
 perfect knowledge of all languages, arts, and sciences. It is throwing
 away time to be mistress of French, Italian, and German; music,
 singing, and dancing.... I do not mean, therefore, that Frederika’s
 acquirements should be more than superficial, and I flatter myself
 that she will not remain long enough at school to understand anything
 thoroughly.”

It remains only to notice with what kindred indignation the two writers
complain of the little honour accorded their craft. Miss Burney, in
fact, did much to raise her profession; but it was not considered
“quite respectable” by Miss Austen’s contemporaries.

Mr. Delvile complains of Cecilia’s large bill at the booksellers’, on
the ground that

 “a lady, whether so called from birth, or only from fortune, should
 never degrade herself by being put on a level with writers, and such
 sort of people.”

In the preface to _Evelina_ Miss Burney declares that

 “in the republic of letters, there is no member of such inferior
 rank, or who is so much disdained by his brethren of the quill, as
 the humble novelist; nor is his fate less hard in the world at large,
 since, among the whole class of writers, perhaps not one can be named
 of which the votaries are more numerous but less respectable.”

Jane Austen is more spirited in her complaint, and takes her example
from Miss Burney herself:

 “Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic
 custom, so common with novel-writers, of degrading, by their
 contemptuous censure, the very performances to the number of which
 they are themselves adding; joining with their greatest enemies
 in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely
 ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she
 accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages
 with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronised
 by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and
 regard? I cannot approve it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to
 abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new
 novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the Press
 now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.
 Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected
 pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world,
 no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride,
 ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers;
 and while the ability of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History
 of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume
 some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the
 _Spectator_ and a chapter from Sterne, is eulogised by a thousand
 pens, there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity
 and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the
 performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
 ‘I am no novel-reader; I seldom look into novels; it is really very
 well for a novel.’ Such is the common cant. ‘And what are you reading,
 Miss ----?’ ‘Oh, it’s only a novel!’ replies the young lady, while she
 lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame. ‘It
 is only _Cecilia_, or _Camilla_, or _Belinda_,’ or, in short, only
 some work in which the greatest powers of mind are displayed, in which
 the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation
 of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are
 conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.”


FOOTNOTES:

[8] There is good ground for thinking that the change of title was made
after the novel was finished, for Mr. Austen-Leigh says that _Pride and
Prejudice_ was written between October 1796 and August 1797, while it
is referred to as _First Impressions_ in letters as late as June 1799.

[9] Even the names here sound unexpectedly similar.




“PERSUASION” TO “JANE EYRE”

(1818-1847)


SUSAN FERRIER (1782-1854) once declared that “perhaps, after all, the
only uncloying pleasure in life is that of fault-finding”; and this
cynical conclusion may serve to measure, in some degree, the peculiar
flavour of her brisk satire. The fact is, that she acquired her notions
of literary skill from intimate association with “the Modern Athens,”
as Edinburgh then styled itself, wherein “Crusty Christopher” and “The
Ploughman Poet” held sway. It was here, as we know, that “Brougham
and his confederates” formed that conspiracy of scorn, _The Edinburgh
Review_, which Wilson out-Heroded in _Blackwood_. Following Miss
Burney, in her spirited exhibition of “Humours,” Miss Ferrier also
continued the Edgeworth “national” novel, by exploiting a period of
Scotch history untouched by Scott.

As her friend, Wilson, remarks in the _Noctes_:

 “These novels have one feature of true and melancholy interest quite
 peculiar to themselves. It is in them alone that the ultimate
 breaking-down and debasement of the Highland character has been
 depicted. Sir Walter Scott had fixed the enamel of genius over the
 last fitful flames of their half-savage chivalry, but a humbler
 and sadder scene--the age of lucre-banished clans--of chieftains
 dwindled into imitation squires, and of chiefs content to barter the
 recollections of a thousand years for a few gaudy seasons of Almacks
 and Crockfords, the euthanasia of kilted aldermen and steamboat
 pibrochs was reserved for Miss Ferrier.”

And for the accuracy of her picture, the authoress herself lays claim
to having paid careful attention to the results of deliberate study.
“You may laugh,” she writes to Miss Clavering, “at the idea of its
being at all necessary for the writer of a romance to be versed in the
history, natural and political, the modes, manners, customs, etc., of
the country where its bold and wanton freaks are to be played; but I
consider it most essentially so, as nothing disgusts even an ordinary
reader more than a discovery of the ignorance of the author, who is
pretending to instruct and amuse.”

Meanwhile, the “Highlander” was more or less in fashion, and Susan
Ferrier set off her picture by vivid contrasts with the most
_recherché_ daughters of Society. An elegant slave of passion longs
to fly with her Henry to the desert--“a beautiful place, full of
roses and myrtles, and smooth, green turf, and murmuring rivulets,
and though very retired, not absolutely out of the world; where
one could occasionally see one’s friends, and give _déjeuner et
fêtes-champêtres_.” So the foolish Indiana in Miss Burney’s _Camilla_
considered a “cottage” but “as a bower of eglantine and roses, where
she might repose and be adored all day long.”

But a little experience soon teaches her she “did not very well then
know what a desert was.” Scotch mists and mountain blasts dispel the
fancy picture, and, after a brief period of acute wretchedness, the
really heartless victim of a so-called love match becomes the zealous
promoter of mercenary connections.

Miss Ferrier then introduces us to the next generation, where any
attempt at dogmatism about love becomes hazardous.

 “Love is a passion that has been much talked of, often described, and
 little understood. Cupid has many counterfeits going about the world,
 who pass very well with those whose minds are capable of passion,
 but not of love. These Birmingham Cupids have many votaries among
 boarding-school misses, militia officers, and milliners’ apprentices,
 who marry upon the mutual faith of blue eyes and scarlet coats;
 have dirty houses and squalling children, and hate each other most
 delectably. Then there is another species for more refined souls,
 which owes its birth to the works of Rousseau, Goethe, Coffin, etc.
 Its success depends very much upon rocks, woods, and waterfalls; and
 it generally ends in daggers, pistols, poisons, or Doctors’ Commons.”

It would seem that even the heroine is, like Emily in _Udolpho_, rather
at sea concerning the proper distinction between virtue and taste.

 She is “religious--what mind of any excellence is not? but hers is
 the religion of poetry, of taste, of feeling, of impulse, of any and
 everything but Christianity.” The worthy youth who loved her “saw much
 of fine natural feeling, but in vain sought for any guiding principle
 of duty. Her mind seemed as a lovely, flowery, pathless waste, whose
 sweets exhaled in vain; all was graceful luxuriance, but all was
 transient and perishable in its loveliness. No plant of immortal
 growth grew there, no ‘flowers worthy of Paradise.’”

Inevitably the dear creature is captivated, at first sight, by any
good-looking villain: “There might, perhaps, be something of _hauteur_
in his lofty bearing; but it was so qualified by the sportive gaiety of
his manners, that it seemed nothing more than that elegant and graceful
sense of his own superiority, to which, even without arrogance, he
could not be insensible.”

The hero will no doubt require time before he can stand up against so
fine a gentleman; but justice requires his ultimate triumph, since, in
Miss Ferrier’s judgment, a “good moral” was always essential to fiction.

 “I don’t think, like all penny-book manufacturers, that ’tis
 absolutely necessary that the good boys and girls should be rewarded,
 and the naughty ones punished. Yet, I think, where there is much
 tribulation, ’tis fitter it should be the _consequence_, rather than
 the _cause_, of misconduct or frailty. You’ll say that rule is absurd,
 inasmuch as it is not observed in human life. That I allow; but we
 know the inflictions of Providence are for wise purposes, therefore
 our reason willingly submits to them. But, as the only good purpose of
 a book is to inculcate morality, and convey some lesson of instruction
 as well as delight, I do not see that what is called a _good moral_
 can be dispensed with in a work of fiction.”

Miss Ferrier, in fact, would have no hand in the “raw head and bloody
bone schemes” in which Miss Clavering (who wrote “The History of Mrs.
Douglas” in _Marriage_) had, apparently, invited her to collaborate,
and chose rather to exemplify her own theories in three very similar
stories: _Marriage_ (1818), _The Inheritance_ (1824), and _Destiny_
(1831). Urged, again and again, to supplement these successes, she
made “two attempts to write _something_ else, but could not please
herself, and would not publish _anything_”--a most praiseworthy
resolution.

She has left us an entertaining account of her “plan” for _Marriage_,
which may well serve for an exact description of her actual achievement.

 “I do not recollect ever to have seen the sudden transition of a
 high-bred English beauty, who thinks she can sacrifice all for
 love, to an uncomfortable, solitary, Highland dwelling, among tall,
 red-haired sisters and grim-faced aunts. Don’t you think this would
 make a good opening of the piece? Suppose each of us[10] try our hands
 on it; the moral to be deduced from that is to warn all young ladies
 against runaway matches, and the character and fate of the two sisters
 would be _unexceptionable_. I expect it will be the first book every
 wise matron will put into the hand of her daughter, and even the
 reviewers will relax of their severity in favour of the morality of
 this little work. Enchanting sight! already do I behold myself arrayed
 in an old mouldy covering, thumbed and creased and filled with dog’s
 ears. I hear the enchanting sound of some sentimental miss, the shrill
 pipe of some antiquated spinster, or the hoarse grumbling of some
 incensed dowager as they severally enquire for me at the circulating
 library, and are assured by the master that it is in such demand that,
 though he has thirteen copies, they are insufficient to answer the
 calls upon it; but that each one of them may depend upon having the
 very first that comes in!!!”

The interest, in these novels, is not awakened by any subtle
characterisation or by serious sympathy with the dramatis personæ. It
depends rather upon caustic wit, accurate local colour, a picture of
manners, and a “museum of abnormalities.”

Miss Ferrier’s nice distinctions between the “well-bred,” and her
photographs of vulgarity, may claim to rival Miss Burney’s.

 “Mrs. St. Clair, for example, was considerably annoyed by the manners
 of Lady Charles, which made her feel her own as something unwieldy and
 overgrown; like a long train, they were both out of the way and in the
 way, and she did not know very well how to dispose of them. Indeed,
 few things can be more irritating than for those who have hitherto
 piqued themselves upon the abundance of their manner, to find all at
 once that they have a great deal too much, and that no one is inclined
 to take it off their hands, and that, in short, it is dead stock.”

Mrs. Bluemit’s tea-party, again, reveals the Blue-Stockings in all
their glory; while Mr. Augustus Larkins--with his “regular features,
very pink eyes, very black eyebrows, and what was intended for a very
smart expression”--forcibly recalls Mr. Smith of Snow Hill. His ideal
of dress and manners was evidently shared by Bob and Davy Black, who
were

 “dressed in all the extremes of the reigning fashions--small waists,
 brush-heads, stiff collars, iron heels, and switches. Like many other
 youths they were distinctly of opinion that ‘dress makes the man.’...
 Perhaps, after all, that is a species of humility rather to be admired
 in those who, feeling themselves destitute of mental qualifications,
 trust to the abilities of their tailor and hairdresser for gaining
 them the good-will of the world.”

It must be admitted that Miss Ferrier’s obviously spontaneous
delight in satire has occasionally tempted her beyond the limits
of artistic realism. Her miniature of the M‘Dow, for example, has
all the objectionable qualities which revive our preference for the
“elegancies” of romance.

 “Here Miss M‘Dow was disencumbered of her pelisse and bonnet, and
 exhibited a coarse, blubber-lipped, sun-burnt visage, with staring
 sea-green eyes, a quantity of rough sandy hair, and mulatto neck, with
 merely a rim of white round her shoulders.... The gloves were then
 taken off, and a pair of thick mulberry paws set at liberty.”

No such criticism, however applies to those full-length portraits
of the inimitable Aunts in _Marriage_--the “sensible” Miss Jacky,
Miss Nicky, who was “not wanting for sense either,” and Miss Grizzy,
the great letter-writer. “Their life was one continued _fash_ about
everything or nothing”; and if a “sensible woman” generally means “a
very disagreeable, obstinate, illiberal director of all men, women, and
children,” the Aunts were really “well-meaning, kind-hearted, and, upon
the whole, good-tempered” old ladies, whose garrulous absurdities are a
perpetual delight.

Again, Miss Pratt (of _The Inheritance_) has certain obvious
affinities to the inimitable Miss Bates; as Mr. M‘Dow (in _Destiny_)
recalls Collins; and the creation of that good soul, Molly Macaulay,
bears solitary evidence to Miss Ferrier’s seldom-exerted powers of
sympathetic subtlety.

We are tempted to wonder if there be any particular significance in
the fact that, though Miss Ferrier wrote _Marriage_ almost immediately
after the appearance of _Sense and Sensibility_, she did not publish
it till seven years later.[11] If, during that interval, she felt
compelled to study the supreme excellences of a sister-authoress,
it is clear that she wisely abandoned any attempt at imitation. Her
work, as we have seen, directly follows Miss Burney’s, and should be
properly regarded in relation to _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_; reflecting
Society--and the upstart--of a slightly later generation, then
flourishing in North Britain.

       *       *       *       *       *

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD (1787-1855) is the only writer on record who has
deliberately declared herself a disciple.

 “Of course, I shall copy as closely as I can nature and Miss
 Austen--keeping, like her, to genteel country life; or rather going
 a little lower, perhaps; and, I am afraid, with more of sentiment
 and less of humour. I do not _intend_ to commit these delinquencies,
 mind. I _mean_ to keep as playful as I can; but I am afraid they
 will happen in spite of me.... It will be called--at least, I mean
 it so to be--_Our Village_; will consist of essays, and characters,
 and stories, chiefly of country life, in the manner of the _Sketch
 Book_, connected by unity of locality and purpose. It is exceedingly
 playful and lively, and I think you will like it. Charles Lamb (the
 matchless _Elia_ of the London Magazine) says nothing so fresh and
 characteristic has appeared for a long time.”

It _was_ called _Our Village_; and appeared in parts between 1824
and 1832, the earlier series being the best, because afterwards she
wrote for remuneration--when “I would rather scrub floors, if I could
get as much by that healthier, more respectable, and more feminine
employment,”--a declaration which prepares us for the criticism that,
though in her own day she was accused of copying the “literal” manner
of Crabbe and Teniers, she was at heart a frank sentimentalist. “Are
your characters and descriptions true?” asked her friend Sir William
Elford; and she replied, “Yes! yes! yes! as true as is well possible.
You, as a great landscape painter, know that, in painting a favourite
scene, you do a little embellish, and can’t help it, you avail yourself
of happy accidents of atmosphere, and _if anything be ugly, you strike
it out_, or if anything be wanting, you put it in. But still the
picture is a likeness.”

Assuredly Miss Mitford was no realist, nor was her imitation servile.
Once she expressed a desire that Miss Austen had shown “a little more
taste, a little more perception of the graceful”; and, in such matters,
as in culture, she was herself far more professional. But although
she could describe, and even “compose,” with a charm of her own which
almost defies analysis, Miss Mitford’s powers were strictly limited.
The “country-town” atmosphere of _Belford Regis_ lacks spontaneity; and
_Atherton_, her only attempt at a novel, is wanting in varied incident
or motion. Readers attracted by mere simplicity, however, will feel
always a peculiar affection for Miss Mitford, that would be increased
by her “Letters” which she describes as “just like so many bottles of
ginger-beer, bouncing and frothy, and flying in everybody’s face.”

Christopher North remarked in _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ that her writings
were “pervaded by a genuine rural spirit--the spirit of Merry England.
_Every line bespeaks the lady._”

And the “Shepherd” replied:

 “I admire Miss Mitford just excessively. I dinna wunner at her being
 able to write sae weel as she does about drawing-rooms wi’ sofas
 and settees, and about the fine folk in them seeing themsels in
 lookin-glasses frae tap to tae; but what puzzles the like o’ me, is
 her pictures o’ poachers, and tinklers, and pottery-trampers, and
 ither neerdoweels, and o’ huts and hovels without riggin’ by the
 wayside, and the cottages o’ honest puir men, and byres, and barns,
 and stackyards, and merry-makins at winter ingles, and courtship
 aneath trees, and at the gable-end of farm houses, ’tween lads
 and lasses as laigh in life as the servants in her father’s ha’.
 That’s the puzzle, and that’s the praise. But ae word explains
 a’--Genius--Genius, wull a’ the metafhizzians in the warld ever
 expound that mysterious monosyllable.--Nov. 1826.”

       *       *       *       *       *

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY (1797-1851) has no place in the development
of women’s work in fiction, since her one novel, _Frankenstein_,
belongs to no type that has been attempted before or since, though it
is often roughly described as a throw-back to the School of Terror.
The conception of a man-made Monster, with human feelings--of pathetic
loneliness and brutal cruelty--was eminently characteristic of an
age which hankered after the byways of Science, imagined unlimited
possibilities from the extension of knowledge, and was never tired
of speculation. Inevitably the daughter of William Godwin had some
didactic intentions; and her “Preface” declares her “by no means
indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in
the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader; yet
my chief concern in this respect has been limited to the avoiding of
the enervating effects of the novels of the present day, and to the
exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection and the excellence
of universal virtue.” Among other things, Mrs. Shelley betrays
her sympathy with Rousseau’s ideal of the “Man Natural,” and with
vegetarianism. In a mood of comparative reasonableness and humanity the
Monster promises, under certain conditions, to abandon his revenge and
bury himself in the “Wilds of South America.”

 “My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid,
 to glut my appetite; acorns and berries will afford me sufficient
 nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself, and
 will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried
 leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food.”

The ethical struggle, with which Mrs. Shelley has here concerned
herself, arises from circumstances beyond the pale of experience;
but her solution is characteristic, and echoes the spirit of Shelley
himself. Frankenstein, “in a fit of enthusiastic madness, has created
a rational creature,” who, finding himself hated by mankind, resolves
to punish his creator. He promises, however, to abstain from murdering
Frankenstein’s family, if that man of science will make for him a
female companion with whom he may peacefully retire to the wilderness.
Obviously the temptation is great. Frankenstein’s brother has been
already destroyed: it would seem his duty to protect his father and
his wife. But, on the other hand,

 “My duties towards my fellow-creatures had greater claims to my
 attention, _because they included a greater proportion of happiness or
 misery_. Urged by this view, I refused, and I did right in refusing,
 to create a companion for the first creature.”

There is no professional art in the story of Frankenstein, though it
has a certain gloomy and perverse power. It is told in letters from
an arctic explorer “To Mrs. Saville, England”; and the monster’s own
life-story, with the only revelation of his emotions, is narrated
within this narrative, in a monologue to Frankenstein.

It is uncertain whether the work would ever have been remembered, or
revived, apart from our natural interest in the author; although, so
far as it has any similarity with other work, it belongs to a class
of novels which English writers have seldom attempted, and never
accomplished with any distinction.

       *       *       *       *       *

FRANCES TROLLOPE (1780-1863) has been so completely overshadowed by
her son Anthony--himself a distinguished practitioner in the domestic
novel--that few readers to-day are aware that her fertile pen produced
a “whole army of novels and books of travel, sometimes pouring into
the libraries at the rate of nine volumes a year.” She began her
career--curiously enough, when she was past fifty--by a severely
satirical attack on the United States, entitled _Domestic Manners of
the Americans_; and her first novel, _The Abbess_, did not appear till
1833. She was essentially feminine in the enthusiasm of her tirades
against various practices in her generation, and has been freely
criticised for want of taste. _The Vicar of Wrexhill_ (1837), indeed,
is coloured by a violent prejudice which goes far to justify this
objection, and may even excuse the disparaging deduction on women’s
intellect drawn by a contemporary reviewer, who thus characterises her
spirited defence of “oppressed Orthodoxy”:

 “It is a great pity that the heroine ever set forth on such a foolish
 errand; she has only harmed herself and her cause (as a bad advocate
 always will) and had much better have remained at home pudding-making
 or stocking-mending, than have meddled with what she understands so
 ill.

 “In the first place (we speak it with due respect for the sex) she
 is guilty of a fault which is somewhat too common among them; and
 having very little, except prejudice, on which to found an opinion,
 she makes up for want of argument by a wonderful fluency of abuse. A
 _woman’s religion is chiefly that of the heart, and not of the head_.
 She goes through, for the most part, no dreadful stages of doubt, no
 changes of faith: _she loves God as she loves her husband by a kind of
 instinctive devotion_. Faith is a passion with her, not a calculation;
 so that, in the faculty of believing, though they far exceed the other
 sex, in the power of convincing they fall far short of them.”[12]

More than one woman writer has risen, of later years, triumphantly
to confute any such complacent masculine superiority; but it must be
admitted that Mrs. Trollope is scarcely judicial in the venom she
pours out so eloquently upon the head of her “Vicar,” his worshippers,
and his accomplices. This was not quite the direction in which women
could most wisely develop the domestic novel in her day; while
they still--like the Brontës, but in a spirit quite alien to Jane
Austen’s--upheld “that manly passion for superiority which leads _our
masters_ to covet in a companion chosen for life ... that species of
weakness which is often said to be the most attractive feature in
the female character.” It is, again, a curious want of taste which
allows her to dwell upon the pleasure experienced by a comparatively
respectable young man in making a little girl of eight tipsy--though he
is the Vicar’s son.

But, on the other hand, there is considerable power and much sprightly
humour in the story. Mrs. Trollope’s _good_ (_i.e._ orthodox) people
are really delightful, and admirably characterised. The _genuine_ piety
of Rosalind, the Irish heiress, is most artistically united to graceful
vivacity and natural charm: the testy Sir Gilbert is perfectly matched
with Lady Harrington: and the three young Mowbrays are drawn from life.
The study of Henrietta Cartwright, driven to atheism by the hypocrisy
of her horrible father, has all the force of a real human tragedy; and,
if the villainy of Evangelicism is exaggerated, it is painted with
graphic humour. She works from nature, and finds excellent “copy” in
the parish.

Mrs. Trollope, in fact, has left us proof in abundance that women had
learnt to “write with ease”; if, in her case, over-production and
misplaced zeal have led to an abuse of her talents.

       *       *       *       *       *

HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802-1876), “Queen of philanthropists,” has left
a stamp of almost passionate sincerity on everything she wrote. From
earliest days she declared that her “chief subordinate object in life
was the cultivation of her intellectual powers, with a view to the
instruction of others by her writings.” Believing herself the servant
of humanity, she sought to save souls by the diffusion of a little
knowledge.

Inevitably, under such influence, her work was always didactic;
whether inspired by the orthodox faith of her earlier years or the
Atkinson-interpretation of Comte she afterwards espoused: whether
directed towards social reform, or expressed in narrative and
biography. The greater number of her publications, whether or no
actually written for the press, contain those qualities which make the
best journalism; and, though occasionally capricious and “superior”
in private judgment, her brief critical biographies, from the _Daily
News_, are masterpieces in the vignette. She knew “everybody” in her
day; and contributed much to the thirst for “information,” reasonably
applied, which characterised our grandfathers.

But, as a novelist, she has two special claims to notice. Her
“Playfellow Series” (embracing _Feats on the Fiord_, _The Crofton
Boys_, and _The Peasant and the Prince_) are living to-day among
the few priceless inherited treasures of literature. Less obviously
didactic than the Edgeworth “nursery classics,” they have certain
similar characteristics of spontaneity, sympathetic understanding, and
simple directness. Each occupied with quite different subjects, they
are informed by the same spirit, excite the same kind of pleasure,
and--for all their decided, but _not_ obtrusive, moralising--appeal to
the same healthy taste. By those to whom their life-like young people
have been among the chosen friends of childhood, the memories will
never fade.

Miss Martineau’s adult narratives have less distinction; although her
_Hour and the Man_ is a creditable effort in the historic form, and
_Deerbrook_ has much emotional power. To our taste the tone of the
latter must be criticised for its somewhat sensational religiosity,
and for the priggish perfection of its “white” characters. But, on the
other hand, there is subtlety in contrasts among the “undesirables”;
genuine pathos in, for example, the description of Mrs. Enderby’s
death; and plenty of artistic “interest” in the plot: nor can we
neglect mention of the remarkable portrait of Morris, the servant and
most real friend to her “young ladies.”

We cannot avoid, in conclusion, some reference to a distinction
elaborated in an early chapter between the drudgery of “_teaching_”
and the “sublime delights of _education_”: wherein the author quaintly
remarks that a visiting governess can “do little more than stand
between children and the faults of the people about them”; betraying
herein the normal prejudice of the pedagogue against the parent.

Similar theories clearly inspire the eloquence--of a later
chapter--upon a thorny subject on which the author achieved some
pioneer work in her own life.

 “‘Cannot you tell me,’ enquires the persecuted heroine, ‘of some way
 in which a woman may earn money?’

 “‘A woman?’ is the stern reply. ‘What rate of woman? Do you mean
 yourself? That question is easily answered. A woman from the
 uneducated classes can get a subsistence by washing and cooking,
 by milking cows and going into service, and, in some parts of the
 kingdom, by working in a cotton mill, or burnishing plate, as you
 have no doubt seen for yourself at Birmingham. But, for an educated
 woman, a woman with the powers God gave her religiously improved,
 with a reason which lays life open before her, an understanding which
 surveys science as its appropriate task, and a conscience which would
 make every species of responsibility safe,--for such a woman there
 is in all England no chance of subsistence but teaching--that sort
 of ineffectual teaching, which can never countervail the education
 of circumstances--and for which not one in a thousand is fit,--or by
 being a superior Miss Nares--the feminine gender of the tailor and
 hatter.’”

       *       *       *       *       *

MRS. GASKELL (1810-1865) must always be remembered as authoress of
_Cranford_, which has startling similarities to the work of Jane
Austen, and excels her in pathos. If Fanny Burney immortalised
“sensibility,” and Jane Austen created “the lady,” Mrs. Gaskell may
well be called “The Apologist of Gentility.” She taught us that it was
possible to be genteel without being vulgar; and her “refined females,”
if enslaved to elegance and propriety, are ladies in the best sense of
the word.

“Although they know all each other’s proceedings, they are exceedingly
indifferent to each other’s opinions.” They are “very independent of
fashion; as they observe: ‘What does it signify how we dress here at
Cranford, where everybody knows us?’ and if they go from home, their
reason is equally cogent: ‘What does it signify how we dress here,
where nobody knows us?’” We may smile at their ingenious devices for
concealing poverty, their grotesque small conventions, their horror at
any allusions to death or other causes for genuine emotion, and their
love of gossip; but our superiority stands rebuked before simple Miss
Matty’s sense of honour “as a shareholder,” and before the “meeting
of the Cranford ladies” for the generous contribution of their “mites
in a secret and concealed manner.” As Miss Pole expresses it, “We are
none of us what may be called rich, though we all possess a genteel
competency, sufficient for tastes that are elegant and refined, and
would not, if they could, be vulgarly ostentatious”; and they fully
appreciated the true charity of “showing consideration for the feelings
of delicate independence existing in the mind of every refined female.”

Here, indeed, as in almost every thought or deed of their uneventful
existence, our grandmothers can teach us that the eager interest in our
neighbours, which we are accustomed to brand as vulgar and impertinent,
was in actual fact a powerful incentive to Christian practices. There
is a passage in _Cranford_ which would baffle the most elaborate
statistics of ordered philanthropy, as it must silence the protest of
false pride, and remain an invulnerable argument against the isolation
of modern life. “I had often occasion to notice,” observes the
visitor, “the use that was made of fragments and small opportunities
in Cranford: the rose-leaves that were gathered ere they fell, to make
a _pot-pourri_ for some one who had no garden; the little bundles of
lavender-flowers sent to strew the drawers of some town-dweller, or to
burn in the bedroom of some invalid. Things that many would despise,
and actions which it seemed scarcely worth while to perform, were all
attended to in Cranford.”

Nor were Miss Matilda Jenkyns and her friends deficient in any outward
show of true breeding. Despite the most astonishing vagaries of taste
in dress, language, and behaviour, they were dignified by instinct,
and, on all occasions of moment, revealed a natural manner that is
above reproach. Their simple-minded innocence and genuine humility
never tempted them to pass over impertinence or tolerate vulgarity, and
their powers of delicate reproof were unrivalled. We cannot admire the
“green turban” of Miss Matty’s dream, or share her dread of the frogs
in Paris not agreeing with Mr. Holbrook; we should have been ashamed,
maybe, to assist her in “chasing the sunbeams” over her new carpet; and
we may detect sour grapes in Miss Pole’s outcry against that “kind of
attraction which she, for one, would be ashamed to have”; yet I fancy
the best of us would covet admission to Cranford society, and be proud
to number its leaders among our dearest friends.

In fact, the artistic achievement of _Cranford_ is the creation of an
atmosphere. Like the authors of _Evelina_ and of _Emma_, Mrs. Gaskell
is frankly feminine, and not superior to the smallest detail of
parochial gossip; but while the ideals of refinement portrayed are more
akin to Miss Burney’s (allowing for altered social conditions), her
methods of portraiture more nearly resemble Miss Austen’s. She depends,
even less, upon excitement, mystery, or crime, and _Cranford_, indeed,
may be described as “a novel without a hero,” without a plot, and
without a love-scene. Miss Brown’s death is the one event with which
we are brought, as it were, face to face throughout the whole sixteen
chapters. The realities of life, whether sad or joyful, are enacted
behind the scenes and never used for dramatic effect, a reticence
most striking in the incident of Captain Brown’s heroic death. They
serve only to reveal the strong and true hearts of those whose dainty
old-world mannerisms have already secured our sympathy.

Mrs. Gaskell has _left out_ even more than Jane Austen of the ordinary
materials of fiction (though she is an adept at pathos), and her
characters are equally living. She has less wit, but almost as much
humour.

The most obvious limitation of _Cranford_, indeed, is more apparent
than real. As everyone will remember, “all the holders of houses” are
women. “If a married couple settles in the town, somehow the gentleman
disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only
man in the Cranford evening tea-parties, or he is accounted for by
being at his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all
the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant
only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the
gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. What could they do there?... A man
is so in the way in the house.”

Even the Rector dare not attend a public entertainment unless “guarded
by troops of his own sex--the National School boys whom he had treated
to the performance.” The “neat maid-servants” were never allowed
“followers”; and it was Miss Matty’s chief consolation in starting her
little business that “she did not think men ever bought tea.” She was
afraid of men. “They had such sharp, loud ways with them, and did up
accounts, and counted their change so quickly.”

Yet, in fact, the masculine element in _Cranford_ comes frequently to
the front; and the men’s characters are drawn with no less firmness of
outline than the women’s. Miss Matty derives much from her Reverend
father--deceased, from that sturdy yeoman Thomas Holbrook, and from
“Mr. Peter.” It is Captain Brown, and no other, whose misfortunes
unmask the real tenderness of Miss Jenkyns herself; and the good Mr.
Hoggins occasions the only serious discord narrated in the select
circle of “elegant females,” to whom his uncouth surname was a
perpetual affront. The unfortunate conjurer, Signor Brunoni, otherwise
Mr. Brown (was it accident or design, we wonder, which gave him the
same plebeian name as the gallant Captain?); his brother Thomas;
the great Mr. Mulliner, “who seemed never to have forgotten his
condescension in coming to live at Cranford”; honest farmer Dobson; and
dear, blundering Jim Hearn, whose tactful notion of kindness was “to
keep out of your way as much as he could”; each played their part in
the lives of their lady-betters.

Thomas Holbrook, his quotations from Shakespeare, George Herbert, and
Tennyson; his love of Nature; his two-pronged forks; and his charming
“counting-house,” have no less subtle originality than any character in
the whole book; and we should hesitate to name any record of perfect
fidelity, without sentimentalism, to be compared with the simply
chivalrous and cheerful attentions of this gentleman of seventy to
the old lady who had refused, at the bidding of father and sister,
“to marry below her rank.” One can only echo the pious aspiration (so
touching in its unselfish abandonment of a cherished ideal), by which
alone Miss Matty betrayed the emotions excited by the visit to her old
lover: “‘God forbid,’ said she, in a low voice, ‘that I should grieve
any young hearts.’”

Holbrook, moreover, had been no doubt largely responsible for
encouraging the inherent good qualities of Miss Matty’s scapegrace
brother (afterwards the popular Mr. Peter), whose thoughtless pranks
form so strange, and yet so fitting, a background to those finished
miniature-sketches of the stern Rector and his sweet young wife. It
is, indeed, a fine instance of poetical justice by which Mr. Peter is
allowed, in his old age, to bestow a richly merited peace and comfort,
in addition to the diversion of masculine society, upon the very sister
whose early life had been so terribly clouded by his misdeeds.

One is almost tempted to say that Mrs. Gaskell does scant justice to
the first invader of the Amazons, when she refers to Captain Brown
as “a tame man about the house.” Yet those of us with sufficient
imagination to realise the firm exclusiveness of Miss Deborah Jenkyns,
should appreciate the significance of the phrase. The military
gentleman, “who was not ashamed to be poor,” only found his way to that
lady’s good graces by sterling qualities of true manliness. He was
“even admitted in the tabooed hours before twelve,” because no errand
of kindness was beneath his dignity or beyond his patience.

Miss Matty expresses the prevailing sentiment about men, as she has
done on most subjects worthy of attention, with that “love of peace and
kindliness,” which “makes all of us better when we are near her.”

 “I don’t mean to deny that men are troublesome in a house. I don’t
 judge from my own experience, for my father was neatness itself, and
 wiped his shoes in coming in as carefully as any woman; but still a
 man has a sort of knowledge of what should be done in difficulties,
 that it is very pleasant to have one at hand ready to lean upon. Now
 Lady Glenmire” (whose engagement to Mr. Hoggins was the occasion of
 this gentle homily), “instead of being tossed about and wondering
 where she is to settle, will be certain of a home among pleasant
 and kind people, such as our good Miss Pole and Mrs. Forrester.
 And Mr. Hoggins is really a very personable man; and so far as his
 manners--why, if they are not very polished, I have known people with
 very good hearts, and very clever minds too, who were not what some
 people reckoned refined, but who were tender and true.” Again: “Don’t
 be frightened by Miss Pole from being married. I can fancy it may be
 a very happy state, and a little credulity helps one through life
 very smoothly--better than always doubting and doubting, and seeing
 difficulties and disagreeables in everything.”

The finality of the above quotations may further remind us of an
unexpected conclusion to which a careful study of _Cranford_ must
compel the critic. Despite its apparent inconsequence, the desultory
nature of the narrative, and its surprising innocence of plot, the work
is composed with an almost perfect sense of dramatic unity. In reality
every event, however trivial or serious, every shade of character,
however subtle or obvious, is at once subordinate and essential to the
character of the heroine. A heroine, “not far short of sixty, whose
looks were against her,” may not attract the habitual novel-reader;
but unless we submit to the charm of Miss Matty’s personality, we have
misread _Cranford_. Deborah, the domineering, had not so much real
strength of character, and serves only as a foil to her sister’s wider
sympathies; the superficial quickness of Miss Pole never ultimately
misled her friend’s finer judgment; the (temporary) snobbishness of
the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson troubles her heart indeed, but leaves
her dignity unruffled; and the other members of the circle scarcely
aspire to be more than humble admirers of the “Rector’s daughter.”
Miss Matty, of course, is sublimely unconscious of her own influence,
and the authoress very nearly deceives us into fancying her equally
innocent. But she gives away the secret in her farewell sentence; and
I, for one, would not quarrel with her for pointing the moral. Miss
Matty can never lose her place in the Gallery of the Immortals, and we
would not neglect to honour the painter’s name.

Mrs. Gaskell, in _Cranford_, may claim to have reached perfection by
one finished achievement; which embodies the ideal to which we conceive
that the work in fiction peculiar to women had been, more or less
consciously, directed from the beginning. Probably the art would have
been less flawless, if applied--as it was by sister-novelists--to a
wider range of persons and subjects. Nothing of quite this kind has
been again attempted, and it is not likely that such an attempt would
succeed.

We should only notice, in passing, that Mrs. Gaskell left other
admirable, and quite feminine, work on more ordinary lines. _Wives and
Daughters_ is a delightful love story; while _North and South_ and
_Mary Barton_ are almost the first examples of that keen interest in
social problems, and the life of the poor, in legitimate novels (not
fiction-tracts), which we shall find so favourite a topic of women from
her generation until to-day.


FOOTNOTES:

[10] She is writing, again, to Miss Clavering.

[11] When _Pride and Prejudice_, _Emma_, and _Mansfield Park_ had all
been published.

[12] _Fraser’s Magazine_, Jan. 1838.




A LONELY SOUL

(CHARLOTTE BRONTË, 1816-1855)


The genius of Charlotte Brontë presents several characteristics
which do not belong to the more or less orderly development of the
earlier women’s work. In the first place she is primarily a romancist,
depending far more on emotional analysis than on the exact portraiture
of everyday life. Though her materials, like theirs, are gained
entirely from personal experience, she clothes them with a passionate
imagination very foreign to anything in Miss Burney or Jane Austen. She
writes, in other words, because her emotions are forced into speech by
that very intensity; not at all from amused observation of life. It
would be difficult, indeed, to find outside her few remarkable stories
so powerful an expression of passion as felt by women--who do not, as
a rule, admit the power of such stormy emotions. Her work is further
remarkable for being mainly inspired by memory; while the recognition
of responsiveness in women leads her to paint _mutual_ passion as it
has been seldom revealed elsewhere.

Much has been written of late years concerning the life of Charlotte
Brontë, and we have been told that the mystery is solved at last. For
despite the almost startling frankness of Mrs. Gaskell’s famous _Life_;
despite the intimate character of many of her published letters; it has
always been recognised that the Charlotte Brontë of the biographers
was _not_ the Charlotte Brontë of _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_. Now
that we have the letters to Monsieur Heger, however, it seems to be
a prevailing conclusion that reconciliation, and understanding, are
possible. If Charlotte Brontë, like her own Lucy Snowe, was in love
with “her master”; if he was perfectly happy in his married life and,
however responsive to enthusiastic admiration, found warmer feelings
both embarrassing and vexatious; we have discovered the tragedy which
fired her imagination, the utter loneliness which taught her to dwell
so bitterly on the aching void of unreturned affection, to idealise so
romantically the rapture of marriage. Personally we are disposed to
accept these interpretations, but not to rely on them for everything.
To begin with, it is always dangerous to dwell upon any “explanation”
of genius; and, in the second place, it was not Charlotte Brontë’s
experiences (which others have suffered), but the nature awakened by
them, which determined their artistic expression.

Part of the difficulty arises from the two almost contradictory methods
in which she “worked up” her stories. She had remarkable powers of
observation and borrowed from real life as recklessly as Shakespeare
borrowed plots, with very similar indifference to possible criticism.
In this matter, indeed, she cannot be altogether acquitted of malice or
spite; and we do not learn with unmixed pleasure how many “originals”
actually existed for her dramatis personæ.

But, on the other hand, if “every person and a large proportion of the
incidents were copied from life,” the emotional power of her work is
entirely imaginative. As pictures of life, her stories are inadequate
and unsatisfying, partly because there is so much in human nature and
in life which does not interest her: so much of which she knew nothing;
and she is only at home in the heart of her subject. Here again she is
in no way realistic--as was Jane Austen in manners or George Eliot
in emotion--but entirely romantic, however original her conception of
romance. Her heroes and heroines are as far from everyday humanity, and
as ideal and visionary, as Mrs. Radcliffe’s, though she does not, of
course, follow the “rules” of romance: rather creating out of her own
brain a new heaven and a new earth, inhabited by a people that know not
God or man.

Apart from the rude awakening at Brussels, again, she exhibited in
private correspondence by turns the strange contrasts between common
sense and emotionalism which mark her work.

She defines the “right path” as “that which necessitates the greatest
sacrifice of self-interest”: she thinks, “if you can respect a person
before marriage, moderate love at least will come after; and as to
intense passion, I am convinced that that is no desirable feeling.”

She advises her best friend that

 “no young lady should fall in love till the offer has been made,
 accepted, the marriage ceremony performed, and the first half-year
 of wedded life has passed away. A woman may then begin to love, but
 with great precaution, very coolly, very moderately, very rationally.
 If she ever loves so much that a harsh word or a cold look cuts her
 to the heart, she is a fool. If she ever loves so much that her
 husband’s will is her law, and that she has got into the habit of
 watching his looks in order that she may anticipate his wishes, she
 will soon be a neglected fool.”

On the other hand, “if you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me,
and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel
society, as it is, insipid, you would pity me and I daresay despise me.”

Her emotion on first seeing the sea is absolutely overpowering; and
surely we know the woman who insisted on visiting a maidservant
“attacked by a violent fever,” fearlessly entered her room in spite
of every remonstrance, “threw herself on the bed beside her, and
repeatedly kissed her burning brow.”

Experience with her, in fact, had never been confined to the external
happenings, which can be accumulated, with more or less sympathy, by
the biographer; and her own declaration of how she worked up episodes
outside her own experience may be applied, without much modification,
to her manipulation of that experience itself. Asked whether the
description of taking opium in _Villette_ was based on knowledge,

 “She replied, that she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of
 it in any shape, but that she had followed the process she always
 adopted when she had to describe anything which had not fallen within
 her own experience; she had thought intently on it for many and many
 a night before falling to sleep--wondering what it was like or how it
 would be--till at length, sometimes after the progress of her story
 had been arrested at this one point for weeks, she wakened up in the
 morning with all clear before her, as if she had in reality gone
 through the experience, and then could describe it word for word as it
 had happened.”

It is obvious that, if no less feminine than her predecessors, the
nature and methods of Charlotte Brontë would produce very different
work from theirs. In narrative and description she remains domestic and
middle-class. She does not adopt the “high” notions of aristocracy, she
does not plunge into the mysteries of crime. Her plots are laid “at
home,” so to speak, and among the professional classes or small gentry
with whom she was personally familiar. The only material which may be
noticed as a new departure is derived from her particular experiences
in schools in England and abroad, combined with her intimate knowledge
of the governess and the tutor. In _Shirley_, again, she is one of the
earliest women to devote any serious attention to the progress of
trade and the introduction of machinery, with its effect on the social
problems of the working classes.

In construction, on the other hand, she is admittedly inferior
to her predecessors, since her plots are melodramatic, and her
characterisation is disturbed by a somewhat morbid analysis of unusual
passion. Her feminine ideal has no parallel in the “sensibility”
of Fanny Burney or the sprightly “calm” of Jane Austen. Its most
distinguishing characteristic is, naturally, revealed in the attitude
assumed towards man. The hero, the ideal lover, is always “the Master”
of the heroine. Jane Eyre being a governess and Lucy Snowe a pupil,
we might perhaps miss the full significance of the phrase; but even
the strong-minded Shirley refuses Sir Philip Nunnely, because, among
other reasons, “he is very amiable--very excellent--truly estimable,
but _not my master_; not in one point. I could not trust myself with
his happiness: I would not undertake the keeping of it for thousands; I
will accept no hand that cannot hold me in check.”

Jane Austen once playfully accused herself of having dared to draw a
heroine who had fallen in love without first having ascertained the
gentleman’s feeling. This is the normal achievement--in Charlotte
Brontë--not only of heroines, but _of all women_. It is, of course,
almost inevitable that since, in her work (as in those of her
sister-authors) we see everything _through the minds_ of the women
characters, we should learn the state of their heart _first_; but, in
most cases at least, it is certain that we are in as much doubt as the
heroine herself concerning the man’s feelings, and it is fairly obvious
that often he has actually not made up his mind. The women in Charlotte
Brontë, in fact, are what we now call “doormats.” They delight in
_serving_ the Beloved; they expect him to be a superior being, with
more control over his emotions; less dependent on emotion or even on
domestic comfort, appropriately concerned with matters not suited to
feminine intellects, and accustomed to “keep his own counsel” about the
important decisions of life.

It is her achievement to have secured our enthusiastic devotion to
“females” so thoroughly Early Victorian; for the heroines of Charlotte
Brontë remain some of the most striking figures in fiction. They are
really heroic, and, while glorying in their self-imposed limitations,
become vital by their intensity and depth. Jane Austen once quietly
demonstrated the natural “constancy” of women; Charlotte Brontë paints
this virtue in fiery colours across all her work. Her incidental, but
most marked, preference for _plain_ heroines--inspired, apparently, by
passionate jealousy of popular beauty--serves to emphasise the abnormal
capacity for passion and fidelity which, in her judgment, the power of
easily exciting general admiration apparently tends to diminish.

A contemporary reviewer in the _Quarterly_--probably Lockhart--found
this type of women disgustingly sly. The whole of _Jane Eyre_, indeed,
fills him with holy horror, which is genuine enough, though expressed
with most ungentlemanly virulence, and prefaced with the extraordinary
suggestion that “Jane Eyre is _merely another Pamela_ (!) ... a
small, plain, odd creature, who has been brought up dry upon school
learning, and somewhat stunted accordingly in mind and body, and who
is thrown upon the world as ignorant of its ways, and as destitute
of its friendships, as a shipwrecked mariner upon a strange coast.”
Rochester, on the other hand, he finds “captious and Turklike ... a
strange brute, somewhat in the Squire Western style of absolute and
capricious eccentricity.” The book is guilty of the “highest moral
offence a novel-writer can commit, that of making an unworthy character
interesting in the eyes of the reader. Mr. Rochester is a man who
deliberately and secretly seeks to violate the laws both of God and
man, and yet we will be bound half our lady writers are enchanted with
him for a model of generosity and honour.”

We cannot, to-day, detect the “pedantry, stupidity, or gross
vulgarity” of the novel; nor do we distinguish so sharply between
the sly governess--“this housemaid _beau ideal_ of the arts of
coquetry”--determined to catch Rochester, and the “noble, high-souled
woman” who rejects his dishonourable proposals. The fact seems to be
that masculine critics of those days regarded the _expression_ of
emotion as indelicate in woman. Was it this criticism, or merely her
knowledge of men, that inspired that bitter passage in _Shirley_:

 “A lover masculine if disappointed can speak and urge explanation; a
 lover feminine can say nothing; if she did, the result would be shame
 and anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery. Nature would brand
 such demonstration as a rebellion against her instincts, and would
 vindictively repay it afterwards by the thunderbolt of self-contempt
 smiting suddenly in secret. Take the matter as you find it; ask no
 question; utter no remonstrance: it is your best wisdom. You expected
 bread, and you have got a stone; break your teeth on it, and don’t
 shriek because the nerves are martyrised: do not doubt that your
 mental stomach--if you have such a thing--is strong as an ostrich’s:
 the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put
 into it a scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly
 upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time,
 after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture,
 the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great
 lesson how to endure without a sob.”

Men could not conceive that any lady who was _conscious_ of love
had “really nice feelings” about it. Moreover, Jane Eyre is “a mere
heathen ... no Christian grace is perceptible upon her.” She upheld
women’s _rights_, which is “ungrateful” to God. “There is throughout a
murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations
of the poor, which, as far as each individual is concerned, _is a
murmuring against God’s appointment_.” Wherefore the “plain, odd woman,
_destitute of all the conventional features of feminine attraction_,”
is not made interesting, but remains “a being totally uncongenial
to our feelings from beginning to end ... a decidedly vulgar-minded
woman--one whom we should not care for as an acquaintance, whom we
should not seek as a friend, whom we should not desire for a relation,
and whom we should most scrupulously avoid for a governess.”

This outspoken, and unsympathetic, criticism is yet eminently
instructive. It shows us all that Charlotte Brontë accomplished for the
first time; and reveals the full force of prejudice against which she
was, more or less consciously, in revolt.

It remains only to note that in the matter of style her critics at once
recognised her power. “It is impossible not to be spellbound with the
freedom of the touch. It would be mere hackneyed courtesy to call it
‘fine writing.’ It bears no impress of being written at all, but is
poured out rather in the heat and flurry of an instinct which flows
ungovernably on to its object, indifferent by what means it reaches it,
and unconscious too.”

Passing to modern criticism, we find one writer declaring that
Rochester’s character “belongs to the realm of the railway bookstall
shilling novel,” while to another it seems “of all her creations the
most wonderful ... from her own inmost nobility of temper and depth of
suffering she moulded a man, reversing the marvels of God’s creation.”

It is not, I think, necessary to be dogmatic in comparing the
“greatness” of _Villette_ and _Jane Eyre_. The former is “more
elaborated, more mature in execution, but less tragic, less simple
and direct.” The influence of personal tragedy (assuming her love
for Monsieur Heger) obviously permeates the work; leading to the
idealisation of the pedagogue genius (revived in Louis Gerard Moore,
Esq.--himself half Flemish), and to unjust hostility against the
Continental feminine (partially atoned for in Hortense Moore). On the
other hand, it is more in touch with real life; less melodramatic,
though still sensational; more acutely varied, and equally vivid, in
characterisation.

Finally, in _Shirley_, if the spirit of Charlotte Brontë is less
concentrated, it burns with no less steady flame. Here, for almost
the first time in a woman-writer, we find that eager questioning upon
the earlier struggles between capital and labour--the risks attendant
upon the introduction of machinery, the proper relations between
master and men--which afterwards became part of the stock material for
fiction. We find, too, much shrewd comment upon her own experience
of clerical types--no less in the contrast between Helstone and Hall
than in the somewhat heavily satirised curates; and some, probably
inherited, injustice towards Dissenters. The characterisation is far
more varied and more realistic; since we have at least two pairs of
lovers, the numerous Yorke family, and a whole host of “walking ladies
and gentlemen,” more or less carefully portrayed. Local colour appears
in several passages of enthusiastic analysis of Yorkshire manners; and
the philosophy is frequently turned on everyday life. For example:

 “In English country ladies there is this point to be remarked.
 Whether young or old, pretty or plain, dull or sprightly, they all
 (or almost all) have a certain expression stamped on their features,
 which seems to say, ‘I know--I do not boast of it--but I _know_ that
 I am the standard of what is proper; let everyone therefore whom I
 approach, or who approaches me, keep a sharp look-out, for wherein
 they differ from me--be the same in dress, manner, opinion, principle,
 or practice--therein they are wrong.”

Yet the inspiration of _Shirley_ echoes _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_.
Here, too, as we have seen,--though the heroine is a rich beauty,--Man
should be Master; and “indisputably, a great, good, handsome man is the
first of created things.” Yet neither Shirley nor her friend Caroline
have anything in common with the “average” woman, who, “if her admirers
only _told_ her that she was an angel, would let them _treat_ her like
an idiot”; or with her parents, who “would have delivered her over
to the Rector’s loving-kindness and his tender mercies without one
scruple”; or with the second Mrs. Helstone, who “reversing the natural
order of insect existence, would have fluttered through the honeymoon,
a bright, admired butterfly, and crawled the rest of her days a sordid,
trampled worm.”

  _Jane Eyre_, 1847.
  _Shirley_, 1849.
  _Villette_, 1852.
  _The Professor_, 1857.




“JANE EYRE” TO “SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE”

(1847-1858)


EMILY BRONTË (1818-1848) can scarcely, in character or genius, be
accommodated to any ordered consideration of development. Regarded by
many enthusiasts as greater than her more famous sister, she stands
alone for all time. Her one novel, _Wuthering Heights_, is unique for
the passionate intensity of its emotions and the wild dreariness of
its atmosphere. Save for the clumsily introduced stranger, who merely
exists to “hear the story,” the entire plot is woven about seven
characters, all save one nearly related, and a few servants.

“Mr. Heathcliff,” said the second Catherine, “_you_ have _nobody_ to
love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the
revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery.
You _are_ miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious
like him? _Nobody_ loves you--_nobody_ will cry for you when you die! I
wouldn’t be you!”

Charlotte calls him “child neither of Lascar nor gipsy, but a man’s
shape animated by demon life--a Ghoul--an afreet”; and “from the time
when ‘the little black-haired swarthy thing, as dark as if it came
from the Devil,’ was first unrolled out of the bundle and set on its
feet in the farm-house kitchen, to the hour when Nelly Dean found the
grim, stalwart corpse laid on its back on the panel-enclosed bed,
with wide-gazing eyes that seemed to ‘sneer at her attempt to close
them, and parted lips and sharp white teeth that sneered too,’” this
human monster dominates every character and event in the whole book.
Men and women, Linton or Earnshaw, are but pawns in his remorseless
brain; thwarting his will, daring his anger time after time; yet always
submitting at last to the will of their “master”: save, indeed, at
the fall of the curtain, when he had “lost the faculty of enjoying
destruction.” For the passion of Heathcliff’s strange existence
is gloomy revenge--against fate and his own associates. Bitterly
concentrated on the few human beings--all occupying two adjacent
farms--with whom his life is passed, he seems the embodiment of an
eternal curse, directed to thwart every natural feeling, every hope of
happiness or peace.

Emily Brontë reveals no conception of humanity save this fiendish
misanthrope; churlish boors like Hindley and Hareton Earnshaw; weak
good people like Edgar, Isabella, and Linton; passionate sprites like
the two Catherines. Old Joseph indeed contains some elements of the
comic spirit, exhibited in hypocrisy; and Nelly Dean alone has _both_
virtue and strength of character. But in making, or striving to unmake,
marriages between these “opposites”; in forcing their society upon
each other, and hovering around his helpless victims; the arch-fiend
Heathcliff has ample scope for the indulgence of his diabolical whim.
The tormenting of others and of himself; the perverse making of misery
for its own sake; the ingenious exercise of brutal tyranny, are food
and drink to this twisted soul. In ordinary cases we should wonder what
might have happened had Catherine married him. We should set about
picturing Heathcliff in happy possession of the love for which he
craved so mightily: we should have murmured, “What cruel waste.” But
the power of Emily Brontë’s conception denies us such idle imaginings.
Heathcliff was manifestly incapable of “satisfaction” in anything, and
there, as elsewhere, was Catherine his true mate. No circumstances, the
most roseate or ideal, could have tamed his savage nature, quieted his
stormy discontents, or lulled his passion for hurting all creatures
weaker than himself. Such love as his must always have crushed and
devoured what it yearned for: he could never have had enough of it:
have rested in it, or rested upon it. He was, indeed, possessed by the
“eighth devil.”

In reality, then, the resemblance between Charlotte and Emily Brontë
is comparatively superficial, arising from similarity of experience
and the bleak atmosphere of the scenes and people among which they
lived.[13] Emily can scarcely be called an exponent of human passion,
since the beings she has created bear little or no resemblance to
actual humanity.

Charlotte has told us that her sister’s impressions of scenery and
locality are truthful, original, and sympathetic; the bleakness of the
atmosphere is not exaggerated. But, on the other hand, we learn--as we
should expect--that “she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the
peasantry among whom she lived, than a nun has of the country people
who sometimes pass her gates.... She knew their ways, their language,
their family histories: she could hear of them with interest, and talk
of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but with them she
rarely exchanged a word.” Hence, having a naturally sombre mind, she
drank in only “those tragic and terrible traits of which, in listening
to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes
compelled to receive the impress.”

For those characteristics, more or less superficial, in which her
dramatis personæ resemble real life, they are drawn, with marvellous
insight and sympathy, from the moorlands; but they are not, themselves,
moorland folk. They are sheer creations of the imagination. The
terrible possibilities which lurk within us are used indeed in the
compounding, but so combined and concentrated as to banish all human
semblance. It is up to any of us to become such as Heathcliff and
the rest, for she has not violated the _possibilities_; but a kinder
fate, that grain of virtue and gentleness without which no human being
was ever born and held his reason, has saved us from the absolutely
elementary passions, tormenting and repining, of these strange beings.

She is as far from realism as an “unromantic” writer can well be;
and, by sheer force of will or vividness of imagination, compels and
fascinates us to accept, as worthy of study and full of interest, the
characters she has created.

And because, as has been often noticed, women are--curiously
enough--not usually pre-eminent in imagination, her work remains
supreme for certain qualities, which we may vainly seek elsewhere in
English literature.

       *       *       *       *       *

ANNE BRONTË (1820-1849) sheds but a pale glimmer beside her fiery
sisters. She produced two novels: _Agnes Grey_, the record of a
governess, and _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, a morbid picture of
“talents misused and faculties abused”--both founded on personal
experience. She worked quietly, but with mild resolution; reproducing
exactly her own observations on life, never straying beyond what she
believed to be literally the truth. “She hated her work, but would
pursue it. When reasoned with on the subject, she regarded such
reasonings as a temptation to self-indulgence. She must be honest: she
must not varnish, soften, or conceal.”

Anne Brontë has left us her “warning”; and if the stories embodying
the moral are not particularly stimulating or dramatic, they do, after
a painstaking fashion, reveal character and reflect life. She had,
moreover, a mild humour, entirely denied to Charlotte or Emily, as the
following description of an “unchristian” rector may serve to show:

 “Mr. Hatfield would come sailing up the aisle, or rather sweeping
 along like a whirlwind, with his rich silk gown flying behind him and
 rustling against the pew doors, mount the pulpit like a conqueror
 ascending his triumphal car; then, sinking on the velvet cushion
 in an attitude of studied grace, remain in silent prostration for
 a certain time; then mutter over a Collect, and gabble through the
 Lord’s Prayer, rise, draw off one bright lavender glove, to give the
 congregation the benefit of his sparkling rings, lightly pass his
 fingers through his well-curled hair, flourish a cambric handkerchief,
 recite a very short passage, or, perhaps, a mere phrase of Scripture,
 as a headpiece to his discourse, and, finally, deliver a composition
 which, as a composition, might be considered good.”

Like Charlotte, she prefers a plain heroine, seeming almost jealous of
beauty in others, and regards man as the natural “master” of woman.

Art, inspired by a sense of duty, need not detain us further.

       *       *       *       *       *

MRS. CRAIK (1826-1887) belongs, in all essentials, to the modern school
of novelists; although (like many another of her day) she appears
almost more out-of-date than the women of genius who preceded her. For
the “average” writers belong to one age and only one. Yet the enormous
mass of work she produced may still be read with some pleasure,
and deserves notice for its competent witness to certain phases of
development in women’s work.

In the first place she practically invented the “novel for the young
person” (which is not “a children’s story”); and, in the second,
she carried to its extreme limit that enthusiasm for domestic
sentimentality (which is quite different from “sensibility”) so dear to
the Early Victorians.

Obviously it can be no matter for surprise that, as women became
accustomed to the use of their pen and experienced in its influence,
they should wake at last to the peculiar needs of their daughters--for
a class of story which, without the false ideals of romance or the
coarseness of early fiction, was in itself thoroughly interesting and
absorbing. We have seen that, in purifying the novel, our greatest
women-novelists were, for the most part, content to practise their art
as an art. Jane Austen, undoubtedly, is a peculiarly wholesome writer
(and therefore an influence for good); but she had no direct moral
purpose. And the didactic elements in Miss Edgeworth, Hannah More, and
Harriet Martineau are somewhat inartistically pronounced.

In Mrs. Craik’s day the desire for improvement was phenomenally active
and varied. She was “conscious” of this particular opening (afterwards
expressed and developed by Miss Yonge), and, in her own manner,
prepared to meet it. It is impossible not to recognise that the whole
appeal of _John Halifax, Gentleman_ is directed towards youth. The
feminine idealism, whether applied to men or women, embraces all the
vague and innocent dreams of heroic virtue which belong to the dawn of
life. The supreme domination of family life, the education “at home”
for boys and girls alike, and a thousand other minutiæ of feeling and
opinion, are designed for that period--possibly the most important in
character-training--before experience has tested the will. There is
no shirking of truth, the method is realistic; and we must recognise
the value of an atmosphere so refined and purified, yet manly and
practical. For John Halifax is always a fighter, one who makes his own
way--without sacrifice of principle or losing his sympathy with the
less capable, and less fortunate, among the sons of toil.

_John Halifax_ may fairly be taken as “standing” for Mrs. Craik. Here
and in other novels (numbering about fifty) we may read her message,
understand the Early Victorian lady, and observe one groove along which
the woman-novelist was destined to work with comparative independence.
From revealing themselves, they have turned (as had Charlotte Brontë
with very different results) to give away their ideal of manhood.

       *       *       *       *       *

MRS. OLIPHANT (1828-1897) belongs to the same group of thoroughly
efficient Victorian novelists as Mrs. Craik. Living to an old age
she produced nearly a hundred volumes, all witnessing the scope and
power which had now been accepted in women’s work. Her output is
far more varied than Mrs. Craik’s--bolder, more humorous, and less
sentimental. She published some admirable history, a notable record of
the Blackwoods--involving expert, if rather emotional, criticism--and
dabbled in the Unseen. Having great sympathy with the Scotch
temperament, she also imparted a more modern tone to the “national”
novel, somewhat after Galt’s manner.

In her work also we find, very definitely, the “note” of protest.
Those truly feminine young ladies (a Jane Austen pair), the daughters
of the _Curate-in-Charge_, for example, are perpetually in revolt
against convention. Mab, the artist, suffers from a governess who
considers drawing “unladylike,” and believes that “a young lady who
respects herself, and who has been brought up as she ought, _never
looks at gentlemen_: There are drawings of _gentlemen_ in that book.
Is that nice, do you suppose?”[14] The practical Cicely shoulders the
family burdens; and is promptly “cut” by her friends, _because_ she
takes up the post of village schoolmistress. Like “John Halifax” she
had been compelled to face life (for others as well as herself) with
absolutely nothing but “her head and her hands.” With less fuss she
made an equally good fight, with no encouragement from that proud and
tender-hearted old gentleman, her father, whose one idea of happiness
was to “fall into our quiet way again.” He “felt it was quite natural
his girls should come home and keep house for him, and take the trouble
of the little boys, and visit the schools: How is a man like that to be
distinguished from a Dissenting preacher?” To them it still seems: “We
cannot go and do things like you men, and we feel all the sharper, all
the keener, because we cannot _do_.”

It is doubtful if women had ever been less conscious of their
limitations, or less dissatisfied with them; but the definite
expression of criticism arose at this period, because they were
acquiring the habit of expressing themselves, and had glimpses of
possible change. From Charlotte Brontë, women not only pictured life
from a feminine standpoint, but discussed and criticised it--a movement
which “found itself” in George Eliot.

Mrs. Oliphant still speaks, and thinks, consciously, as a woman. But
she does not “accept” everything. As to the craftmanship of fiction,
we may now assume it for women, as had the public. We are reaching,
indeed, the time when her province is no longer to stand aside. The
later writers speak as individuals among artists, not as part of a
group or school.

As mentioned above, Mrs. Oliphant also wrote competent criticism
and played the part, still comparatively novel among women, of an
all-round practical journalist, knowing the world of letters, familiar
with publishers and the “business” of authorship, handling history or
biography like a person of culture. In her later years she essayed,
in _The Beleaguered City_ and elsewhere, some way into that field of
psychic inquiry--developed by her son Laurence--and since their day a
familiar topic in fiction.

At one time, indeed, greater things were expected of her. _The
Chronicles of Carlingford_ (1863) approach genius. They appeared
after _Adam Bede_, and it is scarcely surprising that men imagined
the discovery of a second George Eliot. We find in them that almost
masculine insight--from an intellectual eminence--of parochial
affairs, small society, and the country town, combined with passionate
character-analysis, emotional philosophy, and bracing humour, which
constituted the individuality of George Eliot.

Mrs. Oliphant, in her early days, produced several “Chronicles,” in
which the characters reappear, though diversely centralised; and we may
consider two examples at some length.

_Miss Marjoribanks_, following the woman’s lead, is professedly a
study in a certain feminine type. The heroine was known among her
schoolfellows as “a large girl.”

 “She was not to be described as a tall girl--which conveys an
 altogether different idea--but she was large in all particulars, full
 and well-developed, with somewhat large features, not at all pretty
 as yet, though it was known in Mount Pleasant that somebody had said
 that such a face might ripen into beauty, and become ‘grandiose,’ for
 anything anybody could tell. Miss Marjoribanks was not vain; but the
 word had taken possession of her imagination, as was natural, and
 solaced her much when she made the painful discovery that her gloves
 were half a number larger, and her shoes a hair-breadth broader,
 than those of any of her companions; but the hands and feet were
 perfectly well-shaped; and being at the same time well-clothed and
 plump, were much more presentable and pleasant to look upon than the
 lean rudimentary school-girl hands with which they were surrounded.
 To add to these excellences, Lucilla had a mass of hair which, if it
 could but have been cleared a little in its tint, would have been
 golden, though at present it was nothing more than tawny, and curly
 to exasperation. She wore it in large thick curls, which did not,
 however, float or wave, or do any of the graceful things which curls
 ought to do; for it had this aggravating quality, that it would not
 grow long, but would grow ridiculously, unmanageably thick, to the
 admiration of her companions, but to her own despair, for there was no
 knowing what to do with those short but ponderous locks.”

After which unconventional description, we are not surprised to learn
that our heroine “was possessed by nature of that kind of egotism, or
rather egoism, which is predestined to impress itself, by its perfect
reality and good faith, upon the surrounding world.... This conviction
of the importance and value of her own proceedings made Lucilla, as she
grew older, a copious and amusing conversationalist--a rank which few
people who are indifferent to, or do not believe in, themselves can
attain to.”

Miss Marjoribanks had two objects in life--to “be a comfort to” her
widowed father and “to revolutionise society.” Undoubtedly she “made”
Carlingford, and, though her father was perfectly satisfied with his
own management of life, she did actually succeed in proving herself
essential to his well-being. A young woman who, on her own showing,
“never made mistakes” and was “different” from other ladies, was able
to effect much with the “very good elements” of Carlingford. She
created a social atmosphere of peculiar distinction, she managed the
most intractable of archdeacons, she found “the right man” to represent
the borough. She was as fearless as, and far more successful than, Miss
Woodhouse, in making marriages; and in every respect went her own way
with a most engaging self-confidence. Dr. Marjoribanks respected and
“understood” her, though he thought her more “worldly” than she proved
herself; and no one gave her full credit “for that perfect truthfulness
which it was her luck always to be able to maintain.”

The character is worth our study; for it is improbable that fiction
has ever produced, or will ever venture to repeat, a heroine so
entirely convinced of a mission in life, and so competent to carry
it out. Scarcely ever concerned with sentiment, she had a genius for
doing “the right thing,” and thoroughly enjoying the contemplation of
her own achievements. Yet she was really generous and kind-hearted,
entirely above jealousy or meanness. We may question, perhaps, whether
any woman, or man either, was ever quite so consistent: since even
in yielding to Cousin Tom’s importunities, she was but planning a
new campaign--“to carry light and progress” into “the County.” Yet
few readers will fail to recognise the power and charm of Lucilla
Marjoribanks--a new revelation of what a woman conceives woman may be.

In all her dialogue, in the narrative, and in the minor
characterisation, Mrs. Oliphant here proves herself an easy master
of convincing realism. We know Carlingford and its inhabitants as
intimately as our native town.

_Salem Chapel_, indeed, reveals another side of the picture. Miss
Marjoribanks and her friends were staunch church people. The sturdy
deacons, their women-folk, and Mr. Vincent’s whole flock, belong to
another sphere. “Greengrocers, dealers in cheese and bacon, milkmen,
with some dressmakers of inferior pretensions, and teachers of
day schools of similar humble character, formed the _élite_ of the
congregation.” Indeed, “the young man from ’Omerton” proves to be
something of a firebrand among these simple souls. His declaration
of independence does not meet with their approval: “Them ain’t the
sentiments for a pastor in our connection. That’s a style of thing as
may do among fine folks, or in the church where there’s no freedom; but
them as chooses their own pastor, and don’t spare no pains to make him
comfortable, has a right to expect different.” Since the poor fellow
is “getting his livin’ off them all the time,” he must go their way
without question: “A minister ain’t got no right to have business of
his own, leastways on Sundays. Preaching’s his business.” The most
loyal of them can always recall “that period of delightful excitation
when they were hearing candidates, and felt themselves the dispensers
of patronage”; though, as the caustic Adelaide truthfully remarked,
“even when they are asses like your Salem people, you know they like a
man with brains”; and Mr. Vincent had “filled the chapel.”

Mrs. Oliphant has contrasted the limitations of Dissent with a
somewhat melodramatic personal tragedy which insensibly draws Mr.
Vincent under the influence of “them great ladies” who “when they’re
pretty-looking” are “no better nor evil spirits,” and, alas, “a
minister of our connection as was well acquainted with them sort of
folks would be out of nature.” The whole atmosphere is obviously
uncongenial, and we see that it makes the man totally unfit for his
work.

Nevertheless, it is with two characters wholly “within the fold” that
our sympathies must finally remain. It is Mrs. Vincent and Tozer the
Butterman who are the real hero and heroine. Certainly the gentle widow
cannot understand her clever son, and her absolute lack of common sense
is quite exasperating; but everyone recognises that she is “quite the
lady,” and no Roman mother of classic immortality ever revealed such
perfect loyalty under such tragic difficulties. She knew “how little a
thing makes mischief in a congregation,” for “she had been a minister’s
wife for thirty years,” and her superb devotion to doing the right
thing by everybody conquered persons of far greater intellect and
assurance, under difficulties that few men could have faced for any
consideration. Again and again this quiet and most provokingly fussy of
women absolutely dominates the stage, conquering all adversaries. She
is almost absurdly inadequate for the “realities” of life; but such a
past mistress of tact and decorum, so instinctively aware of “what is
expected of her,” and so courageously punctilious in manner, that she
triumphs over odds the most overwhelming, proving inflexible where she
knows her ground. Entirely without control over her emotions, she yet
never forgets or fails in her “duty.”

The heroism of Mr. Tozer, naturally, does not depend upon such
subtleties or refinements. He is of sterner stuff; but it would be hard
to find, in life or fiction, a zealous deacon, so thoroughly conversant
with the duties and the privileges of his position, who could rise
with such broad-minded charity to circumstances so exceptional. He
is genuinely kind, and really loyal to Mr. Vincent. Without the
slightest knowledge, or any power to appreciate the emotional turmoil
which had thrown that young minister off his balance, the worthy
shopkeeper trusts his own instincts, fights like a hero for his friend,
and absolutely pulverises the enemy. He has no natural gifts for
eloquence, no diplomacy or tact; but he has faith, insight, and courage.

The minister’s wife and the deacon entirely remove the reproach we
might otherwise level against Mrs. Oliphant of satirical contempt for
Nonconformity. With Miss Marjoribanks, they establish her power in
characterisation.

Finally, the crowded picture of life at Carlingford given in the
two novels prepares us for that conscious and professional study of
“material” for fiction which women had only recently acquired, and
which bears its finest fruit in George Eliot.

       *       *       *       *       *

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE (1823-1901) presents almost as many facets as Mrs.
Oliphant, but her work more nearly resembles Mrs. Craik’s. Primarily
a High-Churchwoman and a sentimentalist, she was more directly
educational than either. Her _Cameos of English History_ are models of
popular narrative, a little coloured by prejudice; but no praise can be
too high for that children’s story, also historical, _The Little Duke_,
or for the equally charming _The Lances of Lynwood_.

As a novelist she was chiefly concerned, as hinted already, with the
_conscious_ development of the tale “for the young person,” which she
defines and justifies in her


 PREFACE TO “THE DAISY CHAIN; OR, ASPIRATIONS”

 “No one can be more sensible than is the author that the present is
 an overgrown book of a nondescript class, neither the ‘tale’ for the
 young, nor the novel for their elders, but a mixture of both.

 “Begun as a series of conversational sketches, the story outran both
 the original intention and the limits of the periodical in which it
 was commenced; and, such as it has become, it is here presented to
 those who have already made acquaintance with the May family, and may
 be willing to see more of them. It would beg to be considered merely
 as what it calls itself, a Family Chronicle--a domestic record of home
 events, large and small, during those years of early life when the
 character is chiefly formed, and as an endeavour to trace the effects
 of those aspirations which are a part of every youthful nature. That
 the young should take the hint, to think whether their hopes and
 upward breathings are truly upwards, and founded in lowliness, may be
 called the moral of the tale.

 “For those who may deem the story too long, and the characters too
 numerous, the author can only beg their pardon for any tedium that
 they may have undergone before giving it up.

 “Feb. 22nd, 1856.”

As it happens, this passage contains several points which serve to
elucidate the special characteristics of its author’s work. We see at
once the serious moral purpose, and its direct aim. We may notice,
again, that she at least recognises, and admits, what may be called
disparagingly the chief function of women novelists--the narration of
“Family Chronicles,” the domesticity, the emphasis on “home” life.
And, finally, we have a confession of her tendency to overcrowd the
characters; her devotion for persons to whom the reader has been
already introduced, now reappearing--for further development--in
another tale.

Miss Yonge, in fact, had a weakness for genealogy. One novel often
describes the children of persons figuring in another. We may
recognise old friends in every chapter. No doubt the habit may become
wearisome, and it was carried to excess. But, on the other hand, we
must be conscious of exceptional familiarity with “the May family,”
for example; and the process, when restrained with discretion, is a
perfectly legitimate application of the realistic ideal. In real life
the plots are not rounded off in one volume. Reunions that are utterly
unexpected, if not unwelcome, are constantly surprising us, and the
children of friends or relatives have a natural bias towards each other.

Moreover, in this matter Miss Yonge reveals extraordinary skill.
Technically, we could name the heroine of _The Daisy Chain_. She has
several peculiarities, recalling Maggie Tulliver. But we are nearly
as intimate with the two Margarets; the “worldly” sister is drawn
with subtle command of detail; the innumerable brothers are perfectly
differentiated; Dr. May stands out clear in every mood; the “heiress”
is absolutely alive; and there is no hesitation about the minor
characters. Miss Yonge can “manage” as many people as you please. There
is no faltering or hesitation about her touch anywhere.

To-day, probably, we do not quite willingly accept so much religiosity.
We certainly cannot “assume” the Church. Our “aspirations” may not
expend themselves upon a steeple or a Sunday school. But there can be
no question about this good lady’s understanding of young people. The
family picture is sound and wholesome. No member of the group offends
us by his or her sanctimonious perfection. All are perfectly human,
youthfully impulsive, and wholesomely eager. And the Early Victorians
_were_ sentimental.

As in _John Halifax, Gentleman_, the atmosphere belongs to the dawn of
life. The love-stories--of which, needless to say, we have several--are
whole-hearted, without complexity. There is no juggling with right and
wrong, no “questioning,” no element of sordidness.

Though we should alter a good deal, perhaps, in detail--of manner,
thought, and ideal--it is difficult to see how work could be done
better for the particular class of readers appealed to; who would,
undoubtedly, actually prefer a crowd.

Once more, Miss Yonge is frankly feminine. She has established one
more special function for women novelists, a legitimate offspring of
the domestic realism which they followed from the first; a work almost
impossible to man.


FOOTNOTES:

[13] As Lockhart expresses it in the _Quarterly_, “There is a decided
family likeness between _Jane Eyre_ and _Wuthering Heights_, yet the
aspect of the Jane and Rochester animals in their native state, as
Catherine and Heathcliff, is too odiously and abominably pagan to be
palatable even to the most vitiated class of novel readers. With all
the unscrupulousness of the French school of novels it combines that
repulsive vulgarity in the choice of its vice which supplies its own
antidote.”

[14] “She did not approve of twilight walks. Why should they want to go
out just then like the tradespeople, a thing which ladies never did.”




A PROFESSIONAL WOMAN

(GEORGE ELIOT, 1819-1880)


George Eliot once declared that “if art does not enlarge men’s
sympathies, it does nothing morally.... The only effect I long to
produce by my writings is that those who read them shall be better able
to _imagine_ and to _feel_ the pains and joys of those who differ from
themselves.”

It is written in _Adam Bede_:

 “My strongest effort is to avoid any arbitrary picture, and to give a
 faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves
 in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective; the outlines will
 sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused; but I feel
 _as much bound_ to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection
 is, _as if I were in a witness box narrating my experience on oath_....

 “I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who
 could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up
 in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to
 turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green
 fields--on the real breathing men and women who can be chilled by
 your indifference or injured by your prejudice, who can be cheered
 and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your
 outspoken, brave justice.

 “So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make
 things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but
 falsity, which, in spite of one’s efforts, there is reason to dread.
 Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult....

 “It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight
 in many Dutch paintings; which lofty-minded people despise. I find
 a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a
 monotonous, homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more
 among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence,
 of tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn, without
 shrinking, from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic
 warriors, to an old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating
 her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a
 screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of
 her spinning wheel, and her stone jug, and all those cheap common
 things which are the precious necessaries of life to her; or I turn to
 that village wedding, kept between four brown walls, where an awkward
 bridegroom opens the dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride,
 while elderly and middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular
 noses and lips, and probably with quart-pots in their hands, but with
 an expression of unmistakable contentment and good-will....

 “All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us
 cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children--in our
 gardens and in our houses.... Paint us an angel if you can, with a
 floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint
 us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening
 her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any
 æsthetic rules which shall banish from the region of art those old
 women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns
 taking holiday in a dingy pothouse, those rounded backs and stupid,
 weather-worn faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough
 work of the world--those homes with their tin pans, their brown
 pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions....

 “There are few prophets in the world, few sublimely beautiful women,
 few heroes. I can’t afford to give all my love and reverence to such
 rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my everyday
 fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great
 multitude whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have
 to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni
 or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common labourer, who
 gets his own bread, and eats it vulgarly but creditably with his
 own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre
 of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out
 my sugar in a vilely-assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the
 handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers; more needful
 that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of
 gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with
 me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too
 corpulent, and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson,
 than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay,
 or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever
 conceived by an able novelist.”

Woman has found, and proclaimed, her mission. She is a moral realist,
and her realism is not inspired by any idle ideal of art, but by
sympathy with life. Jane Austen and Mary Mitford were compared,
condescendingly, with Dutch painters. George Eliot claims the parallel
with pride. It may be questioned if realism was ever defended with so
much eloquence, from such high motives. Finally, if the romance of
high life has no place in these pictures, neither has the romance of
crime, adventure, or squalid destitution. They hold up the mirror to
mediocrity. They present the parish.

And for many years George Eliot influenced thought and culture among
the middle-classes more widely, and perhaps more profoundly, than
any other writer. We can remember a generation for whom the moral
problems involved in the relations between Dorothea and Will Ladislaw
were a favourite topic for tea-table conversation in serious families;
and when the novelist herself married a second time, it seemed to
many that an ideal had been desecrated. Her intensity of religious
feeling, combined with independence towards theological authority,
expressed with truly artistic effect the whole temperament of an
age whose spiritual cravings were almost exclusively ethical. Her
contribution to literature, placing her in the highest rank, was the
creation of many characters, instinct with humanity, struggling with
fine moral earnestness towards the attainment of an ideal, halting
long and stumbling often by the way. Their appeal to young readers
of each generation is irresistible; while the crowded backgrounds,
so truthfully and dramatically portrayed, of a day when the English
middle-classes were ever eager in extending their moral and mental
horizon, can never lose value as an important chapter in social history.

If we have read them rightly, it is this for which women’s work had
been all along preparing the way. George Eliot certainly had not so
great a genius as Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë; she was not a
pioneer like Fanny Burney. But she had greater breadth, more firm
solidity; and she was conscious of her aim, with the professional
training, the culture, _and_ the genius to achieve.

Women, we see, have been always realistic and parochial. They have
avoided the glitter of wealth and the grime of sin. Tender to
prodigals, they have loved the home. If the “intense and continuous
note of personal conviction,” so conspicuous in George Eliot, began
with Charlotte Brontë, women have always felt and thought morally.

She has been summarily dismissed as an “example of the way in which the
novel--once a light and frivolous thing--had come to be taken with the
utmost seriousness--had in fact ceased to be light literature at all,
and began to require rigorous and elaborate training and preparation in
the writer, perhaps even something of the athlete’s processes in the
reader.”

But such seriousness was characteristic of her age, and everyone had
then learnt to demand professionalism in art; while, on the other hand,
readers of 1821 were assured that “Miss Austen had the merit of being
evidently a Christian writer,” who conveyed “that unpretending kind of
instruction which is furnished by real life,” and whose works may “on
the whole be recommended, not only as among the most unexceptionable of
their kind, but as combining, in an eminent degree, instruction with
amusement.”

Charlotte Brontë, we may remember, was declared, by her contemporaries,
“one who has, for some sufficient reason, long forfeited the society
of her sex”; and George Eliot herself was accused of “coarseness and
immorality,” in her attempt “to familiarise the minds of our young
women in the middle and higher ranks with matters on which their
fathers and brothers would never venture to speak in their presence ...
and to intrude on minds which ought to be guarded from impurity the
unnecessary knowledge of evil.” To such critics her claim to kinship
with the “honest old Dutchman” is set aside for a parallel to “the
perverseness of our modern ‘pre-Raphaelites,’ with their choice of
disagreeable subjects, uncomely models, and uncouth attitudes.”

Such is the natural result of women daring to think for themselves.
To-day we are content rather to notice that Miss Burney first cleansed
the circulating library, and Miss Austen most unobtrusively extolled
the domestic virtues; while their sisters in art all contributed to the
prevalence of wholesome fiction; until Miss Brontë and George Eliot
stirred up the conscience of man towards woman. In reality women are
born preachers, and always work for an ideal.

The period, indeed, is already approaching in which women’s work can no
longer be treated _en masse_ and by itself, apart from men’s. It is no
longer essentially spontaneous or unconscious, as in Miss Burney and
Jane Austen. We have described the writers immediately preceding George
Eliot as professional experts, careful of art; and once the world had
learnt to _expect_ good work from woman and grown accustomed to her
as an artist, there remained no further occasion for her to speak as
a woman among aliens. George Eliot, indeed, like Charlotte Brontë,
had been, by some of her contemporaries, taken for a man; but the
youngest and most inexperienced reader to-day could scarcely have been
momentarily deceived. There are, indeed, certain tricks, or mannerisms,
of masculinity; but they are superficial, and not actually worn with
much grace or skill.

No earlier woman-writer, indeed, had assumed so comprehensive a
philosophy, or scarcely any attempt at ordered opinion on life in
general, on character, or on faith. But, despite the enthusiasm of
certain biographers, despite the influence--unquestioned--of Herbert
Spencer, Strauss, George Henry Lewes, and others, we are not personally
disposed to grant much weight to our author’s generalisations; while
certainly the obtrusiveness of her moralising is an artistic blemish.

The fact is that George Eliot’s outlook remains thoroughly emotional
and feminine. In herself, we know, she always saw life through a
man-interpreter; and the didactics of her novels are derived from the
study of books, not from the exercise of independent reason or thought.
If she _talked_ ethics, she _felt_ faith.

But, on the other hand, her work has little external affinity with
that of the women of genius preceding her (though it may be a natural
development from theirs), because it is obviously the result of
training and study, that is _professional_. It is, moreover, the
first important contribution by women to the problem novel with a
purpose. Both points can be easily illustrated by the most elementary
comparison.

We have tacitly assumed, and with obvious justification in fact, that
Fanny Burney and Jane Austen, for example, wrote entirely out of their
own personal experience. We picture their own surroundings from the
society in their novels, noting the power acquired by the limitation.
Charlotte Brontë did not go beyond her own circle, save in imagination.
But George Eliot, no less certainly, _studied_ mankind _for copy_. It
is true that she made more direct _use of_ her own family and friends
than they. Maggie Tulliver is no less autobiographical than Lucy Snowe.
True also that for description and atmosphere she depended largely on
memory. But even here the treatment is that of a self-conscious artist,
composing and presenting from outside, studying effects, grouping
types; always alive to a comparison between life and literature. And
as she _uses_ the human material which has come to her in the natural
order of things, she increases it by the journalist’s eye for new copy,
piquant contrast, and unexpected revelation. She invokes, moreover, the
assistance of every literary device--prepared humour, scholarly style,
cultured allusion, local colour, analytical characterisation, and
dramatic construction. We have here no longer a spontaneous revelation
of woman; rather her captain in full array, armed for fight.

Nor is the message, or open discussion of problems, less novel or
less deliberate. It was possible, indeed inevitable, to notice in the
earlier examples of woman’s work that she held theories on life not
quite in accord with what man had always expected from her. Part of
her inspiration, no doubt, was the desire to express these. On certain
points, recognised womanly,--such as education and the ordering of a
home,--she soon learnt to speak openly; but, in the main, we studied
the woman’s ideal of character and conduct from her portrait-painting;
we deduced her approval from her sympathy, her budding criticism from
her scorn. If she attempted direct teaching, it was mostly in support
of mere conventional duty; the reward of virtue and the punishment of
vice, tentatively measured perhaps by a standard, not quite blindly
copied from men. The greatest artists among women before Charlotte
Brontë never obtruded the moral, discussed the problem.

But what was fearlessly urged on a few chosen topics from the
Haworth parsonage became the foreground and main subject with the
assistant editor of the _Westminster Review_. We are, to-day, somewhat
overweighted with problem novels; but George Eliot was the first among
us to realise the full power of fiction as a vehicle more persuasive,
if not more powerful, than the pulpit; for the fearless and intimate
discussion of all the questions and difficulties which must confront a
man, or a woman, who is not content to accept things as they are, or to
believe all he is told. To-day we may detect

 “a curious _naïveté_ in the whole impression George Eliot’s novels
 convey.... The ethical law is, in her universe, as all powerful as
 the law of gravitation, and as unavoidable. Remorse, degeneration of
 character, and even material loss, are meted out for transmission with
 the rigid and childlike sense of justice which animated the writers of
 the Old Testament. Her temper was Hebraistic, and goodness was more to
 her than beauty. It may be doubted whether in the world, as we see it,
 justice works as impartially and with such unmistakable exactitude,
 whether the righteous is never forsaken, and evil always hunts the
 wicked person to overthrow him.”

But we must remember that George Eliot’s conception of wickedness,
if limited, was well in advance of her age; that she understood
temptation, and could draw a most dramatically “mixed” character. Her
people are not all black or all white. She knew how slight an error or
slip, how amiable a weakness, could lead to actions which the Pharisee
called sin, and the Puritan would punish with hell-fire. She entirely
forgave Maggie Tulliver, she held out the hand of fellowship to Godfrey
Cass, and even to Arthur Donnithorne. If “we are almost afraid of”
Dinah Morris, she, too, certainly loved sinners. George Eliot, in
fact, will not accept any opinion on authority, or follow the world in
judgment; and if “the world has never produced a woman philosopher,”
her work remains pre-eminent as the first complete and outspoken record
of woman’s “scientific speculation to discover an interpretation of the
universe,” her first conscious message to mankind; destined to “raise
the standard of prose-fiction to a higher power; to give it a new
impulse and motive.” She has now spoken for herself on conduct and on
faith.

Nevertheless George Eliot remains a woman. We still look to her
primarily for the revelation of woman, and woman’s vision of man. We
have taken another step, onward and inward, towards the mystery of
the feminine ideal, the meaning of the Home and the Family to those
who make it. All this is far more complex, indeed, than anything we
have studied in earlier chapters. It embraces, in _Romola_, some
reconstruction of past times; in _Daniel Deronda_, some study of an
alien race. It includes sympathy for a woman wandering so far from
the natural feminine instincts as to abandon, and half murder, her
own child; for a girl who, given to dreamy ideals and passionate
self-sacrifice, will yet suffer attentions from the acknowledged lover
of her cousin, simply because he is handsome. It reveals the genuine
repentance and uplifting of a drunken wife; it permits “friendship”
between a married woman and a young artist whose very vices are more
attractive than the heartless tyrannical egoism of her husband. We
have travelled a long way, certainly, from Catherine Morland and Fanny
Price. We can imagine a new Lydia Bennet under George Eliot.

Still the problems are women’s problems: the solutions are feminine,
as we may see from the eagerness with which they were condemned by
man, the conservative and the conventional. “I’m no denyin’,” said Mrs.
Poyser, “the women are foolish. God almighty made ’em to match the
men.” It was George Eliot’s ambition, towards which she accomplished
much, that “the women” should be less intent upon that _matching_, more
willing, and able, to mould themselves after their own pattern: in
their turn to form a creed, to establish a standard--wherein she was
following, but more consciously, those who had gone before. As Huxley
remarked, in answer to Princess Louise, she did not “go in for” the
superiority of women. She rather “_teaches the inferiority of men_.”

For, verily, there is no more in it. Her women are lost outside the
home; they are not financially, or intellectually, “independent.”
They have no professions, no clubs, no sports. Their interests are
confined to religion, domesticity, and love. Nor does George Eliot
attempt to follow “the men” into politics[15] or business, on to the
cricket field or the parade ground. A soldier is distinguished by his
regimentals, a scholar by his library, a doctor by his gig. She has
a strong partiality, tempered by criticism, for the clergy; she can
distinguish, intelligently, between Church and Dissent; she knows a
good deal about squires and farmers; she loves the labourer. We may
safely regard her work as the continuation, and the completion, of our
subject.

The completion, indeed, is rather intellectual than artistic. She
covers the whole ground, as none of her predecessors had attempted; she
makes the last final addition of subject by discovering, and facing,
social problems; she applies the last word in literary professionalism;
but inasmuch as her characters are more typical and more studied than
Jane Austen’s, they are, in a sense, less modern and less universal. We
may learn _more_ from her about women, and women’s opinions; but these
are the women of one age only--fast awakening, indeed, and conscious of
many troubling possibilities, but not free.

Their chief aim is, while widening their knowledge and sympathy,
to speak with imperious accents of duty, that “stern Daughter of
the Voice of God.” Despite her assumption of masculine logic and
reasoning, itself an artistic blemish, she offers no explanation of
her categorical and materialistic, ethical dogma. The distinction
between good and evil with her is in the last resort a question of
emotional instinct, haunted by “the faltering hope that a spiritual
interpretation of the universe may be true.” It is impossible to avoid
feeling that she accords the greatest strength of character to serene
piety like that of Dinah Morris, or to Adam Bede’s conception of the
“deep, spiritual things in religion ... when feelings come into you
like a rushing, mighty wind.... His work, as you know, had always been
part of his religion, and from very early days he saw clearly that good
carpentry was God’s will.” In her heart of hearts, George Eliot, we are
certain, would have echoed Mrs. Poyser’s preference for character over
doctrine: “Mr. Irvine was like a good meal o’ victual, you were the
better for him without thinking on it; and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o’
physic, he gripped you and worrited you, and, after all, he left you
much the same.”

It was Mr. Irvine, you will remember, who put on his slippers before
going upstairs to his plain, invalid sister; and “whoever remembers how
many things he has declined to do even for himself, rather than have
the trouble of putting on or taking off his boots, will not think this
last detail insignificant.” It needs a woman, however, to appreciate
such a service of love.

George Eliot, indeed, could be humorous, somewhat pedantically, and
even genial about little things, and she recognised most fully their
importance in life. But her more calculated and accumulative effects
were all tragic or subdued melancholy; partly, no doubt, from this
uncertainty of hers about faith and her passionate sense of justice,
so relentless in its demand for the punishment of sin; partly also
from that tinge of sadness which overshadows the narrow, old-fashioned
dogma by which her own childhood was moulded. Hard as she strove for
intellectual freedom, and eagerly as she proclaimed independence of
judgment, the halter of early impressions was round her neck; and it
is only by dwelling upon incidents or individuals, and ignoring the
studied main motive, that we can gain from her work any of the joy in
physical or natural beauty which should be an artist’s first care to
impart.

Yet, after all, nature has triumphed over temperament. In reality,
for example, Dinah Morris lives for us in her tactful tenderness for
the querulous old Lisbeth, and in her yearning towards Hetty; not in
the “call,” the “leading,” and the “voices” by which her ministry was
inspired. On the other hand, we admire her dignified superiority to
masculine criticism of women’s preaching: “It isn’t for men to make
channels for God’s Spirit, as they make channels for the water-courses,
and say, ‘Flow here, but flow not there.’”

Hetty Sorrel, again, was only adventurous through misfortune; she
belongs to the fireside. Dorothea was a hero-worshipper; Maggie
Tulliver is the ideal sister; Mary Garth the ideal helpmate. The crimes
of Rosamond Vincy, if there be no mercy in their exposure, are wholly
domestic; the sins of Janet are committed for her husband.

It is the same with the men. Amos Barton is only a poor country
clergyman, and grey-haired Mr. Gilfil “filled his pocket with
sugar-plums for the little children.” Adam Bede “had no theories about
setting the world to rights,” and “couldn’t abide a fellow who thought
he made himself fine by being coxy to’s betters.” The Tullivers, father
and son, were, in their different ways, as fine specimens of honest
tradesmen as Bulstrode was a consummate hypocrite of the provinces.
Lydgate was no more than an exceptionally clever and cultured general
practitioner, and we fancy that Will Ladislaw was a better lover
than artist. George Eliot’s squires are typical ornaments of the
countryside; her farmers belong as permanently to one side of the
hearth as their wives to the other. Silas Marner, practising a trade
that could not “be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil
One,” since “all cleverness was in itself suspicious,” had no power of
filling his life with “movement, mental activity, and close fellowship”
outside the “narrow religious sect” in which his youth was passed.

Nancy Osgood “actually said ‘mate’ for ‘meat,’ ‘’appen’ for ‘perhaps,’
and ‘’oss’ for ‘horse,’ which, to young ladies living in good Lytherly
society, who habitually said ’orse, even in domestic privacy, and only
said ’appen on the right occasions, was necessarily shocking.” She
supported “a cheerful face under rough answers and unfeeling words by
the belief that ‘a man must have so much on his mind’”; and “had her
unalterable code” ready for all occasions.

They are not an heroic company, you perceive, these sons and daughters
of a highly intellectual woman-novelist. In its more primitive
exponents their “kindness” is “of a beery and bungling sort,” their
anger is brutal and bigoted; they are not really interested in general
principles, in psychological analysis, in refined passion, or in
the future of mankind. Yet they are very serious about life, a good
deal puzzled by the apparent injustice of God, and filled with love
or hatred towards all their neighbours. In this parish, as in most,
everyone knows all about everyone else’s affairs, and finds them of
supreme interest.

Thus George Eliot maintains the feminine attention to minutiæ; the
woman’s centralisation of Life round the family. She has acquired
knowledge, “read up” literature, and to some extent digested
philosophy; but she applies her powers, her culture, and her
training--from practice and association with professional writers--to
the amplification and rounding off of woman’s art. She established
domestic realism by the expression of feminine insight. She is content
to leave other things to other pens. The appearance of generalisations
not influenced by her sex is misleading. It is only a modern form of
the old story. Her heart, and her genius, are those of a woman, womanly.

  _Scenes of Clerical Life_, 1858.
  _Adam Bede_, 1859.
  _The Mill on the Floss_, 1860.
  _Silas Marner_, 1861.
  _Romola_, 1863.
  _Felix Holt_, 1866.
  _Middlemarch_, 1872.
  _Daniel Deronda_, 1876.


FOOTNOTES:

[15] _Felix Holt_ is a possible, but not a successful, exception.




THE GREAT FOUR


Before completing our general conclusions as to the aim and achievement
of women’s work, it may be well to institute certain comparisons
between the four writers of genius around whom we have chronicled our
record of progress; to estimate the ground covered by their work; to
analyse their ideals, witnessing change and development.

Although, as we have seen, all primarily domestic, if not actually
parochial, the middle-class, “set” as a subject by Richardson,
became--more or less consciously--subdivided in their hands. Fanny
Burney confined herself, almost without reserve, to studies of town
life, with an occasional digression to fashionable health resorts.
It is true that her heroines may sigh for a sylvan glade or dream of
green fields: no woman of sensibility could do less. In their minds the
country must inevitably be allied to virtue and content. But we cannot
pretend that the rural scenes of _Camilla_ are drawn from nature; and
Miss Burney was, undoubtedly, most at home in the drawing-room, at
the assembly, in the opera-house, or at the baths. Nowhere else can
we find so vivid and lifelike a picture of Society in the eighteenth
century--the dramatic contrast with “Commerce at play” recalling
_Vanity Fair_. It is here, in fact, that Miss Burney’s exceptional
personal experience gave her the enviable opportunity of drawing both
Mayfair and Holborn at first hand. She is specifically Metropolitan,
though we should not say Cockney. In her imagination there is no world
outside London, no higher ambition than notoriety about Town.

The difference in Jane Austen’s work is almost startling. She seems
practically unaware of London; and it would be difficult to name any
group of intelligent persons so absolutely indifferent to its gaieties,
its activities, or its problems as the characters in _all_ her novels.
It may be that Lucy Steele could not so easily have caught Robert
Ferrars elsewhere; but the few Town chapters in _Sense and Sensibility_
only illustrate our contention as a whole, since the relations between
all remain precisely the same as in the country, and practically
everyone is delighted to “get away again.” The John Knightleys and the
excellent Gardiners, indeed, live in London: but we only meet them
away from home; and, after all, the one “suggestive” comment on town
life is the “unexpected discovery” that people who “live over their
business” were able to “mix with” the County.

Jane Austen’s familiars are all drawn from the most unpromising
circle: those who live “just outside” small towns, have just enough
to live on without working for it, are just sufficiently well-bred
to marry into “the County,” just simple enough to welcome a few
“superior” townspeople. Doctors, attorneys, and--of course--clergymen,
are included, as well as officers, naval or military, retired or
on promotion. Elizabeth’s “He is a gentleman, I am a gentleman’s
daughter,” defines the enclosure. The men, presumably, have business
to transact, affairs to arrange. They read the newspapers and talk
politics--among themselves. But Miss Austen does not concern herself
with these aspects of life. Her heroines are not so gay as Miss
Burney’s; they are not so thoroughly “in the swim.” But her picture is
similarly one of home life, varied by “visiting” and “receiving.” She
describes the distribution of one family into several--by “suitable”
marriages. One section of English society, at one period, in the home,
is completely brought to life again.

Miss Brontë, even more thoroughly ignoring London, does not
exhaustively represent any one class, and has, indeed, little concern
with “manners.” Nevertheless, practically all her characters have
“something to do.” They follow a profession, or own a factory.
Clergymen are still largely in evidence, but education--in different
forms--has come to the front, and, what is still more significant, some
of her heroines have to work for their living. Wherefore, apart from
the increased intensity of emotion, the external atmosphere is far more
strenuous, and in Shirley we even find the dawn of a social problem,
echoes of the early struggle between Capital and Labour. The pictures
of school life, at home and abroad, do not merely reproduce facts,
but cry out for improvements. The intimate knowledge of Continental
conditions is, in itself, a new feature.

Finally, George Eliot extends the sphere of action in many directions.
Maintaining the middle-class realism of Richardson, in her case
largely concentrated on small-town tradesmen and farmers, she still
avoids London, but embraces every “profession,” and approaches, by
expert study for “copy,” the labourers and mechanics “discovered”
by Victorian novelists. She travels lower and more widely than her
predecessors for atmosphere. She does not confine herself, like them,
to personal experience. In _Felix Holt_ she deliberately arranges
for the illustration of economic politics; in _Daniel Deronda_ she
opens a big “race” problem; in _Romola_ she essays “historical”
romance. The passionate emotional outbursts of Charlotte Brontë have
become psychological analyses; “problems” of all sorts are discussed
with philosophical composure and professional knowledge. Within her
self-imposed limits, woman has covered the field.

For the revelation of womanhood, through the types chosen for heroines,
we find that Miss Burney still idealises a form of “sensibility,”
which does not exhibit much advance on the ethereal purity of the
old-world romance. The difference, however, is important, since
the type is studied from life, not created by the imagination. The
essential features of this quality are susceptibility to the fine
shades, delicate refinement, and an exalted ideal of love. It is itself
thoroughly romantic, and separates heroines from ordinary mortals.
Similar characteristics, if betrayed by men, may be attractive, but do
not command respect.

Jane Austen, planting her challenge in the very title of her first
novel, extols sense. Marianne, and--more subtly, perhaps--her mother,
remain to secure our affection for a vanishing feminine grace; but,
evidently, the type cannot survive the century. For, though few writers
have actually said less about the rights of women or the problems of
sex, no one has established with more undaunted conviction the progress
to a new position. Gaily, and with well-assumed irresponsibility,
brushing aside for ever “the advantages of folly in a pretty girl,”
Jane _assumes_--with irresistible good humour--woman’s intellectual
equality in everything that really matters. Catherine Morland is
obviously a relic, conceived of parody; and Fanny Price was born at a
disadvantage. Generally speaking, her heroines judge for themselves as
a matter of course, and judge wisely. They even “judge for” the men.
Their charm arises from mental independence.

Though to our modern notions their lives may seem empty enough, a
thousand and one touches reveal advance on the eighteenth-century
conception of “what is becoming to elegant females.” They demand
rational occupation, common-sense culture, the right to express
themselves. They fall in love at the dictate of their own hearts. They
set the standard of fidelity. It is true that Colonel Brandon’s adopted
daughter and Maria Bertram submit to convention, and that Lydia Bennet
is let off more easily because Darcy had “patched up” the affair; but
the feeling about purity is sound and clear--that is, feminine. The
“sense of sin” experienced by Jane Fairfax may be a little strained,
but we meet with no high-flown notions of self-sacrifice in Emma;
Elizabeth encourages Darcy to an explanation; and women are no longer
afraid of happiness. They have grown to recognise that their life
is in their own hands, not in those of man; that it is largely in
their own power to shape their own destiny; that they will be wise to
create their own standard of conduct, to settle their own affairs.
The ideal emerging is startlingly modern in essentials. Though the
problems confronting us to-day have not arisen, we feel that Jane
Austen’s young ladies could have faced them with equanimity, possibly
with a more balanced judgment than our own. There is a hint, indeed,
in _Mansfield Park_ that the poor woman may one day triumph over her
sisters of leisure; for are not Fanny, William, and even Susan, the
only real “comforts” to their elders? Sir Thomas “saw repeated, and
for ever repeated, reason to ... acknowledge the advantages of early
hardship and discipline and the consciousness of being born to struggle
and endure.”

Curiously enough, Charlotte Brontë, while uttering the first feminine
protest, seems to have slipped back somewhat on this question.
Taking for text Anne Elliot’s claim that women love longer without
hope or life, she demands, even for Shirley, a male “master.” The
explanation of this attitude was partly temperament--since women of
vigorous intellect always need a flesh and blood prophet (witness
Harriet Martineau and George Eliot): and it arose partly from her
individual circumstances. The men of her family were, in different
ways, exasperatingly weak; the “strong” men of her native moorlands
were naturally domineering: her imagination was stirred, and her
mind trained, by the Belgian Professor, Monsieur Heger, who _was_
her master--technically, and who--as we learn from independent
testimony--always took a delight in scolding his pupils. We do not,
to-day, admire the feminine footstool; nevertheless Charlotte Brontë’s
heroines have strong individual character, and are much given to
defying the world. The type will never become popular in fiction,
it is too angular intellectually, and too discontented. The quality
of physical plainness has been seldom adopted by novelists, male or
female. But in _Shirley_ Miss Brontë generously abandons many of her
favourite ideals, for _both_ heroines. The types are mixed here; and
we must feel that had circumstances encouraged a larger output, we
might be compelled to modify many of our conclusions. It remains a
fact that the authoress of _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_ does not stand
in the direct line of progress: save that she introduces the awakening
of women to serious topics, and proves them intent not merely on
self-revelation, but on reform. Her central inspiration, however, is
passion: which no woman had hitherto handled; which few have since so
powerfully portrayed.

It is not easy, even if possible, to summarise the more complex, and
much varied, ideals of womanhood exhibited by George Eliot. Each of
her heroines is a study from life; and, by this time, women were not
all created in one pattern. Again, we can scarcely say that she has
given us a heroine in _Adam Bede_, whereas _Middlemarch_ might claim
to offer three. Maggie Tulliver shows little resemblance to Romola.
Yet, undoubtedly, George Eliot had more conscious, and more definite,
theories on women than any of her predecessors: she deliberately set
out to expound and enforce them.

We are tempted, however, to conclude that her favourite ideal was
self-sacrifice. Her outlook was inclined to be melancholy; and she
introduces us to that struggle between temperament and circumstances
which is the keynote of modern fiction, forming the problem novel.
In Fanny Burney and Jane Austen the heroine was simply more refined,
or more sensible, than her family; and the story was founded on this
difference. In George Eliot each heroine has her own temperament and
her own set of circumstances which create her own problem. Women are
now no longer concerned only with manners and delicacy: they have
entered into life as a whole. The central fact, which may be seen in
the earliest women-writers, is now expressed and deliberately put
forward--that their moral standard is higher than men’s, that they have
been treated unfairly by the world. Charlotte Brontë had emphasised
this protest on one question, George Eliot applies it everywhere.

The elementary truth which the women novelists revealed (and for which
they were censured by masculine critics) was that women do fall in
love without waiting to be wooed. George Eliot develops this into a
declaration of feminine judgment on life and character. Woman is no
longer man-made, man-taught, or man-led. The door is opened for her
independence.

Finally, it must not be forgotten that--whether intentionally or by
instinct concerned with the revelation of their own nature--the great
women-writers have been always awake to the humour of life. One says
continually that women _have_ no sense of humour; but this mistake
arises from generalisings, where the true test can only be applied by
discrimination. Nothing differs so widely between _individuals_ as
the appreciation of humour; though it is true that much masculine wit,
tending towards farce, appeals to few women.

In our “leading ladies” (here scarcely including Charlotte Brontë) we
find peculiar power and extensive variety. Fanny Burney depends on an
eye for comedy, Jane Austen on the humorous phrase, George Eliot on the
study of wit.

In _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_ the comic effects are mostly produced by
the sudden meeting of opposites; the gay, irresponsible exaggeration
of types; the clash of circumstances. Dickens, consciously or
unconsciously, borrowed much of his method from Fanny Burney. The
characters of each have their allotted foible, their catch phrase,
their moral label, which somehow delights and surprises us afresh,
however expected, at each repetition. Those inherently uncongenial are
forced into close contact, one exposing the other. Speaking roughly,
this is the stage manner. Could we not fancy the speakers confronted,
and imagine their expressions of mutual astonishment, there would be
little fun in them. They are not always quite so comic to our eyes as
in each other’s. Captain Mirvan needs Madame Duval as a foil; that
egregious fop Lovel is always playing up to Mrs. Selwyn; and, if Miss
Branghton does not herself see the humour of the inimitable Smith, she
brings it out. In _Cecilia_, again, the guardians produce each other;
the “Larolles” is never so happy as when expounding Mr. Meadows; Mr.
Gosport requires an audience.

Miss Burney’s wit is the child of Society generated in a crowd; it
savours of repartee. Although spontaneous and true to life, it does not
flash out from the nature of things, but from deliberate arrangement.
It has been sought and is found. The material is well chosen. The
people are “put together” for our amusement.

Jane Austen has used, and refined, this method--as she has adapted
everything from Miss Burney--in her earlier work. The titles--_Pride
and Prejudice_, _Sense and Sensibility_--and the ideas behind them
betray their own inspiration. Elizabeth Bennet, clearly, is _intended_
to strike fire from Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine; Mrs. Bennet
would scarcely have seemed so funny to another husband. The “Burney”
innocence of Catherine Morland tempts Isabella to extremes in knowing
vulgarity; Mrs. Jennings cannot ruffle Lady Middleton.

But on her own account, and in her best moments, Miss Austen is far
more subtle. Hers is an intimate humour, dependent on shades, not
contrasts, of character. Even the more boisterous figures of fun,
even Catherine’s ridiculous applications of Udolpho, are complete
in themselves, needing no foil. Miss Austen possesses a humorous
imagination, where Miss Burney could only observe. A mere list of her
quaint characters would fill a chapter, and no one of them is only
comic. They are human beings, not mere puppets set up to laugh at.
Moreover, the humour of them is derived from the polished phrase.
Generally a few words suffice, fit though few.

Most assuredly, on the other hand, Miss Austen does not depend for
her humour upon her comic characters. To begin with, these are never
dragged in for “relief,” they “belong to” the plotting; and in the
second place, much of her most perfect satire arises from scenes
in which they have no part. We have, for example, the dialogue on
generosity between Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood; the paragraph about
“natural folly in a beautiful girl”; Miss Bingley’s ideal for a ball;
Harriet’s “most precious treasures”; Sir Thomas Bertram’s complacent
pride in Fanny; Mary Musgrave’s anxiety about “the precedence that was
her due”; with other incidents too numerous to mention.

The fact is that almost every sentence of Miss Austen’s is pointed with
humour; the finished phrasing of her narrative and her descriptions
are unrivalled in wit. There is no strain or distortion, no laboured
antithesis or uncouth dialect: merely the light touch, the unerring
instinct for the happy phrase. At times we can detect indignation
behind the laughter: her scorn is often most biting, she indulges
in cynicism. But, in the main, her object is plainly derisive: the
sheer joy of merriment, the consolation of meeting folly with a gay
heart. And analysis will prove that, in her opinion, hypocrisy and
pose are the sins unforgivable, the only legitimate occasion of joy
to the jester. Elizabeth may turn off her discomfiture with a joke,
but in reality she is honest, and wise enough to know that Darcy is
unassailable by reason of his good qualities.

The attributes Miss Austen ridicules are those she seriously despises
or dislikes, however generously she often secures our affection for
their possessors. Her “figures of fun” are not wholly despicable.

Attention has been drawn of late to a marked contrast between the
French comedy of “social gesture”--which is entirely intellectual--and
the whole-souled laughter of the English. Shakespeare’s comic “figures
are not a criticism of life--no great English literature is that. It
is a piece of life imaginatively realised. Falstaff is not judged,
he is accepted. Dogberry is not offered as a fool to be ridiculed
by his intellectual betters. We are not asked to deride him. We are
asked to become part of his folly. Falstaff appeals to the Falstaff in
ourselves. Dogberry is our common stupidity, enjoyed for the sake of
the dear fool that is part of every man. Shakespeare’s laugh includes
vice and folly in a humour which is the tolerance of Nature herself for
all her works.... English laughter lives in good fellowship.”

Since Macaulay did not hesitate to compare Jane Austen with Shakespeare
in one matter, we may repeat his audacity here. The definition, if
definition it can be called, will surely apply to _Emma_ and _Pride
and Prejudice_. They are “_pieces of life imaginatively realised_.” We
laugh _with_ the eccentricities, not _at_ them. Properly speaking, Miss
Austen is no satirist. She can amuse us without killing emotion.

As hinted already, Charlotte Brontë has neither humour nor wit. She
takes life most seriously; and, in attempting a comic relief, becomes
lumping or savage. The fact of her “Shirley” curates recognising, and
enjoying, their own portraits may serve to measure the limit of her
success. Such men could only enjoy the second-rate. Her satire against
charity schools and Belgian pensionnats is mere spite.

We must pass on, therefore, to George Eliot, who certainly had wit, and
was once acclaimed very humorous. Here, as elsewhere, our authoress
appears to have gathered up the resources of her predecessors,
developed them by study and culture, dressed them up in the language
of the professional. The fact that the mechanism of her humour can
be analysed, however, must prove its limitation. It is “worked in,”
skilfully, but obviously. There is everywhere an “impression of
highly-wrought sentences which are meant to arrest the reader’s
attention and _warn him what he is to look for_ of tragedy, of humour,
of philosophy.” The humour is obviously “composed” to heighten the
tragic effect by contrast. In her earlier work, indeed, every form of
elaboration in style was but “one sign of her overmastering emotion,”
therefore “fitting and suitable”; but repetition made it tedious
and mechanical. After a time we see through “the expression of a
humorous fancy in a pedantic phrase; the reminiscence of a classical
idiom applied to some everyday triviality; the slight exaggeration of
verbiage which is to accentuate an aphorism ... moulded on the plaster
casts of the schools.”

The fact is that humour, and even wit, flourish most happily in
uncultured fields--for there is only one George Meredith. Yet, within
her limitations, there is triumph for the genius of George Eliot. None
can deny tribute to Mrs. Poyser, or the “Aunts” in _The Mill on the
Floss_. That very severe study and applied observation, which kills
spontaneity, lent her the power to excite tears and laughter. She has
given us oddities as rugged as, and more various than, Miss Burney’s,
contrasts of manners as bustling; scenes and persons as humanly
humorous as Jane Austen’s. She combines their methods, enriching them
by dialect, antithesis, allusion, and the “study” of types. There is
humour _and_ wit in her work.

If, as we certainly admit, both are “worked out” carefully and the
labour shows through, we must also acknowledge that she has embraced,
and extended, all the achievements of woman before her day, indicating
the powers realised and the possibilities to be accomplished.




THE WOMAN’S MAN


Although, as we have seen everywhere, the women novelists did so much
in lifting the veil and, so to speak, giving themselves away; they also
held up the mirror to man’s complacency, and, in a measure, enabled the
other sex to see himself as they saw him. In the process they created
a type, beloved of schoolgirls, which can only be described as the
“Woman’s Man,” and must be admitted a partial travesty on human nature.
It does not, however, reveal any less insight than much of man’s
feminine portraiture.

Curiously enough, the earliest “Woman’s Man” in fiction was of male
origin. We all know how Richardson, having given us Clarissa, was
invited to exert his genius upon the “perfect gentleman.” But the
little printer had ever an eye on the ladies, and, whether or no of
malice prepense, drew the immaculate Sir Charles Grandison--frankly,
in every particular--not as he must have known him in real life, but
rather according to the pretty fancy of the dear creatures whose
entreaties had called into being the gallant hero.

And, as elsewhere, Fanny Burney took up the type, refined it, and lent
an attractive subtlety to that somewhat monumental erection of the
infallible. The actual imaginings of woman are proved less wooden than
Richardson supposed them, and infinitely more like human nature. In
many things Lord Orville resembles Sir Charles. He is scarcely less
perfect, but his empire is more restricted. The chorus of admiration
granted to Grandison, and his astounding complacency, are replaced by
the unconscious revelations of innocent girlhood naturally expressing
her simple enthusiasm to the kindest of foster-parents. The peerless
Orville, indeed, is not exactly a “popular” hero. It needs a superior
mind to appreciate his superiority; and we suspect there were circles
in which he was voted a “prodigious dull fellow.” His life was not
passed in an atmosphere of worship. It is only in the heart of Evelina
that he is king. Nor can we fancy Miss Burney submitting her heroine
to the ignominy, as modern readers must judge it, of patiently and
contentedly waiting, like Harriet Byron, until such time as his
majesty should determine between the well-balanced claims of herself
and her rival to the honour of his hand. Personally, we have never been
able to satisfy ourselves whether Grandison loved Clementina more or
less than Harriet; if he was properly “in love” with either.

It was, indeed, rather becoming so fine a gentleman to be wooed than
to woo; and the visit to Italy was, in all likelihood, actually
brought in as an afterthought, mainly designed to illustrate the power
of conscience over a good man. Anyone less perfect than Sir Charles
would be universally charged with having compromised Clementina; and
the real motive of his English “selection in wives” was to escape
the consequences of an entanglement involving difficulties about
religion and constant association with the Italian temperament. Having
thoroughly investigated the circumstances and judicially examined his
own heart, the cool-headed young man decides that he is not in honour
bound; gently but firmly severs the somewhat embarrassing connection;
and, in dignified language, communicates his decision to “the other
lady.” Humbly and gratefully she accepts his self-justification and his
love. It is obvious that no one could ever have either refused him or
questioned the dictates of his conscience. But as Jane Austen remarks,
in a very different connection, “It is a new circumstance in romance,
I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of a heroine’s dignity.” No
woman writer would permit it.

Nevertheless, in the essential qualities of heart and mind, no less
than in the heroine’s mental attitude towards their perfections, Lord
Orville and Sir Charles Grandison belong to the same order of men: made
by women for women. So far as I am aware, Miss Burney originated the
semi-paternal relationship (reappearing, with variations, in Knightley
and Henry Tilney) which certainly helped to deceive Evelina as to the
state of her heart, and has in itself a peculiar charm. There is real
delicacy, quite beyond Richardson or his Sir Charles, in Orville’s
repeated attempts to preserve Evelina from her own ignorance; to give
her (as none of her natural guardians ever attempted) some slight
knowledge of the world; protect her from insult; and advise her in
difficulty. He never intrudes or presumes; and, because, after all,
women’s first and last mission as novel-writers was the refinement of
fiction, it cannot be too often emphasised that Miss Burney was most
extraordinarily refined for her age. The very coarseness in certain
externals which she admits without protest, should serve only to
establish her own innate superiority.

But it remains true that the essential attribute of Orville, as
of Grandison, was perfectibility. He is a very Bayard, the _preux
chevalier_, and the Sir Galahad of eighteenth-century drawing-rooms.
Neither the author, nor her heroine, would have ever imagined it
possible to criticise this prince of gentlemen. It really pained them
when persons of inferior breeding or less exalted morality occasionally
ventured to oppose his will or question his judgment. His praise, and
his love, were alike a mighty condescension; his mere notice an honour
almost greater than they could bear.

This is the modern, civilised notion of knighthood; the personification
(in terms of everyday life) of that pure dream which has haunted, and
will ever haunt, the musings of maidenhood; the pretty fancy that one
day He, prince of fairyland, will ride into her very ordinary little
existence, acclaim her queen, and carry her away somewhere to be happy
ever after. Miss Burney translated the vision for her generation,
making it, verily, not greatly dissimilar from actual human experience.

We shall see later how certain women of the Victorian era visualised
the same ideal.

In the numberless remarkable signs of feminine advance between the
authoress of _Evelina_ and Jane Austen we find that this particular
attitude and ideal has almost completely vanished. The hero is no
longer quite perfect; condescension is not now his most conspicuous
virtue. The heroine, indeed, has become the one woman who ventures to
criticise him. Darcy learns quite as much from Elizabeth as she from
him. As already hinted, “Mr. Knightley” is the nearest approach in
Jane Austen to the old type. He is the only person in Highbury who
“ventured to criticise Emma”--without being sufficiently snubbed for
his pains. He is, admittedly, the personification of superiority;
though he is not very “sure of the lady.” Again the character is gently
satirised in Henry Tilney, the situation of Northanger Abbey, as we
have said above, being a more subtle parody of Evelina than of Udolpho.
The young clergyman is nearly faultless. Catherine swears by him in
everything--from theology to “sprigged muslin.” He, too, teaches her
all she ever knew about the “great world”; and guides her, without a
rival in authority, among the bewildering intricacies of men and books.

But, in her own domain and as to her most original creations, Miss
Austen has been criticised for her occasional lack of insight towards
men. It may be true, indeed, that neither Darcy nor Knightley always
speaks, or behaves, quite like a gentlemen; which means that, like all
women, she had not an absolutely unerring instinct for the things which
are “not done.” In all probability, as men will never quite understand
women’s emotional purity, women will never fully appreciate men’s alert
sense of honour. Generally speaking, of course, the feminine standard
in all things is far higher than the masculine; and the women novelists
have done much in pulling us up to their level. But there are a few
points, which concern deeper issues than social polish, of which few
women, if any, can attain to the absolute ideal of chivalry.

There are, of course, many more superficial aspects by which the
men in Jane Austen may be easily recognised as woman-made. We hear
comparatively little of their point of view in affairs of the
heart, with which the novels are mainly concerned, save in that most
thoughtful passage closing _Persuasion_; and we know even less of their
attitude towards ethics, citizenship, business, or social problems.
Only clergymen or sailors are shown to be even superficially concerned
with any profession in life; and this is merely because the authoress
was personally intimate with both. It is, in fact, an infallible
instinct for her own limitations which saved her from more obvious
failure as a portrait-painter of men. Man at the tea-table is her
chosen theme; and this too is a work which could not have been safely
entrusted to any male pen.

The Brontës, on the other hand, exhibit a startlingly original
and unexpected revival of the early type, in the central feature
of its conception. Here once more the hero is most emphatically
“the master”--of body and soul. Jane Eyre, we remember, loved--and
served--her “employer”; Lucy Snowe and Shirley their “teachers.” There
are, probably, no more arrogant males in fiction than these gentlemen;
no more enslaved female worshippers. Yet the combination is totally
unlike the Richardson-Burney brand. To begin with, the dominant,
and domineering, hero is represented in each case as almost, if not
quite, unique; not as the man normal. Nor are we called upon to admire
without qualification. There is nothing ideal about Rochester, Monsieur
Heger, Paul Emmanuel, or Louis Moore. The Brontë heroines did not at
all admire perfection in man, and they abominated good looks. Nor were
they, on the other hand, in the least humble by nature, generally
yielding and clinging, or ever grateful for guidance and information.
They had no patience and very little respect for the genus Homo.

There is, indeed, a touch of melodrama in the sharp contrast exhibited
between their proud prickliness towards mankind and their idolatry
of The Man. Few women have written more bitterly of our idle vanity,
our heartless neglect and supreme selfishness, our blind folly, and
our indifference to moral standards. None has spoken with more biting
emphasis of woman’s natural superiority, or of the grinding tyranny
which, for so many generations, she is herein shown to have stupidly
endured. Yet Charlotte Brontë has declared, without qualification and
more frankly than any of her sisters, that no woman can really love a
man incapable of mastery; that she is ever longing for the whip.

To assert herself, to demand liberty or even equality, is uncongenial;
and the aggressive attitude is only adopted as a duty, undertaken
for the weaker sister from a passionate instinct for justice and an
intolerance of sham. There were two things Charlotte Brontë hated:
a handsome man and a deceitful woman. But hate left her very weary.
It was the strain of playing prophetess that inspired her taste for
“doormats.”

Obviously, the conception of a Hero thus evolved is essentially
feminine. The most complacently conservative among us, however
intolerant of the fine shades, could never have either conceived or
admired a Rochester. We should certainly not suppose him attractive
to any woman of character. To us he appears mere tinsel, the obvious
counterfeit and exaggeration of a type we have come to despise a little
at its best. Naturally, such men fancy that they can “do what they like
with the women”; but _we_ knew better, until the novelist confirmed the
truth of their boast. Miss Brontë, moreover, is very much farther from
our idea of a gentleman than Miss Austen. It may be doubted if men
ever like or applaud rudeness, which she apparently considers essential
to honest manliness.

Yet, however unique in its external manifestations, and however
exaggerated in expression, the Brontë hero-recipe involves, like Miss
Burney’s, an assumption that happy marriages are achieved by meeting
mastery with submission. However diverse their conceptions of the
proper everyday balance between the sexes, both find their _ideal_ in
the absolute monarchy of Man.

It must be always more difficult and more hazardous to determine an
author’s private point of view as her art becomes more professional and
self-conscious. George Eliot’s characters are all deliberate studies,
neither the instinctive expression of an ideal nor the unconscious
reflection of experience; and such manufactured products naturally
tend to be extensively varied, seeking to avoid repetition or even
similarity. We may, perhaps, say that George Eliot, out of her wider
experience and more scholarly training, understood men better than her
predecessors. She certainly avoided, as did Jane Austen, the specific
“Woman’s Man”; and, on the other hand, she penetrated, without losing
her way, more deeply into the masculine mystery than the creator of
Messrs. Elton and Collins.

Tom Tulliver’s whole relationship with his sister is an admirable
study in the conventional notion of a stupid man’s “superiority” to a
clever woman; but it cannot be criticised, or in any way regarded, as
a feminine conception. That provokingly worthy and obstinate young man
is perfectly true to life. There is neither mistake nor exaggeration
here. We must all feel that “this lady” knows. In marriage, Tom would
certainly have played the master to any woman “worthy of him,” but
would not thereby have become less normal or natural. If men question
or puzzle over anything in _The Mill on the Floss_, it is not Maggie’s
toleration of Tom, but her temporary infatuation for Stephen. He indeed
is something of a lady’s man, not a woman’s; but probably we may not
disown the type. To some extent, again, Adam Bede is “masterly” to
his mother, and would probably--barring accidents on which the plot
hinges--have been accepted by Hetty in the same spirit; but he is
certainly _not_ perfect, and seldom, if ever, outruns probability.

But although George Eliot, having a wide outlook, recognises and
illustrates the tendency in man to play the master, she does not
associate it with any idea of perfection, nor does she idealise
submission in women. Yet we know that personally, though less intensely
than Charlotte Brontë, she too disliked sex-assertion, and found
comfort in what the other only desired, a large measure of intellectual
rest, by letting a man think and act for her. At all times her religion
and her philosophy were largely borrowed or reflective--for all
their assumption of independence--and every page of her life reveals
the carefully protective influence of George Henry Lewes. Only less
than any of the other chief women novelists did George Eliot permit
self-expression in her work, and the particular portraiture of man we
are here discussing was not the result of study but the exposure of
conviction.

Finally, it was reserved for later writers, not of supreme genius, to
develop the type to its extremity. Charlotte Yonge, with her usual
superabundance of dramatis personæ, has _two_ “women’s men” in _The
Heir of Redclyffe_, and the contrast between them is most instructive.
The aggressive “perfection” of Philip, indeed, is crude enough. Miss
Yonge deliberately exaggerates his manifold virtues in order to
darken the evil within. The reader and his own conscience alone ever
realise the full force of his jealous suspicions and obstinacy in
self-justification. Guy’s faults, on the other hand, are all on the
surface; but his exalted saintliness is even more superhuman than the
other’s unerring morality. Both exemplify a feminine ideal; though
Philip has only one worshipper, her faith is unfaltering. His, indeed,
is the type that lives to hold forth, to inform, and to dogmatise. Woe
to the woman who ventures to think for herself. The power or charm of
Guy is unconscious. They love his passionate outbursts, his generous
impetuosity, his childish remorse and “sensibility.” In him, however,
there are _some_ qualities which men esteem: he was a sportsman,
adventurous, and transparently sincere. Only his final “conversion” and
the death-bed scene spoil the picture. He becomes, in the end (what
Philip had always been), the sport of feminine imagination with its
craving for perfectibility. He loses the human touch, vanishing among
the gods.

We have the “last word” in this matter from _John Halifax, Gentleman_.
With school-girl naïveté Phineas tells us on every page that “there was
never any man like him.” His smile, his tenderness, his courage, his
independence, his tact and tyranny in the home, his quiet influence
on Capital and Labour, are certainly unique, and no less certainly
monotonous. He _understands_ everybody, and “deals with them” easily.
It costs him nothing to lead men and dominate women. Quietly and
without effort, he pursues his way--to an admiring chorus, always “the
master,” the perfect gentleman. He was dignified, attractive, and very
“particular over his daintiest of cambric and finest of lawn.” The
little waif of the opening chapters indignantly repudiated the name of
“beggar-boy”: “You mistake; I never begged in my life: I am a person of
independent property, which consists of my head and my two hands, out
of which I hope to realise a large capital some day.” And he kept his
word.

Prompt and acute in business, of unflinching integrity, and guided
by generous understanding as to the serious labour problems of his
generation, John was one of those fine English tradesmen who effected
so much, not only towards the foundation of our commercial empire, but
towards removing the barriers between their own class and a Society
largely composed of “fox-hunting, drinking, dicing fools.” The girl who
loved him was “shocked” to hear of his being “in business,” although
her feelings quickly developed to proud worship.

It is here, indeed, that Mrs. Craik reveals most power. Towards the
“world”--his equals, his “men,” or his “superiors”--John Halifax is
the true gentleman, and a splendid specimen of manhood. He has rare
dignity, shrewd insight, and ready command of language. The scene of
his “drawing-room” fracas with Richard Brithwood is extremely dramatic,
and gives us almost a higher opinion of the hero than any other.
Entirely free from the narrow-mindedness of the ordinary self-made man,
he almost subdues our dislike of the gentle despotism which he assumes
towards wife and family. The complacent masculinity is exaggerated by
the author’s persistence in keeping him to the centre of the picture;
and we are disposed to believe that it might have been less open to
criticism if expressed, as well as conceived, by a woman. Phineas
Fletcher, the fictional Ego, has some charm; but he is absolutely
feminine, if not womanish, and the Jonathan-David attitude of every
page becomes wearisome by repetition. There is no doubt that this
perpetual enthusiasm of one man for another offends our taste, and
has a tendency to make both a little ridiculous. John has a positive
weakness for perfection, and we should observe the fact with more
pleasure if it were less frequently “explained.”

Here the man creates his surroundings or sets the tone, presumably
exemplifying the author’s ideal. He is singularly pure-minded,
preposterously domestic, and very confident about the natural supremacy
of man. It is the immense amount of tender detail, the infinite number
of soft touches which convict the author of femininity. Her hero,
however, is no knight of romance, no Bayard of the drawing-room, no
love-lorn youth of dreams, no “fine gentleman,” the mate of a girl’s
sensibility. He is not all soul and heart. He is of tougher fibre in
groundwork (despite his “halo”), and primarily practical. Concerned
externally with such tough problems as trade depression, the “bread
riots,” and the introduction of machinery, he is more often placed
before us as lover, husband, father, and friend. Frank and decisive,
he has remarkable self-control, and remains ideally simple. He has
no doubts about sin and goodness, indifference or faith. We should
be tempted to say that he spent his life in the nursery, though
sometimes, indeed, the view of the nursery is not unworthy of our
attention:

 “I delighted to see dancing. Dancing, such as it was then, when young
 people moved breezily and lightly, as if they loved it; skimming
 like swallows down the long line of the Triumph--gracefully winding
 in and out through the graceful country-dance--lively always, but
 always decorous. In those days people did not think it necessary to
 the pleasures of dancing that any stranger should have the liberty to
 snatch a shy, innocent girl round the waist, and whirl her about in
 mad waltz or awkward polka, till she stops, giddy and breathless, with
 burning cheek and tossed hair, looking--as I would not have liked to
 see our pretty Maud look.”

Most of us, I fancy, would think better of John without Phineas at his
elbow, if he were less supremely self-conscious, less given to that
analysis of his own acts and emotions which is essentially feminine.
But Mrs. Craik will not let her hero alone. She thrusts him upon us
without mercy, till we are driven to cry “halt.” We are convinced that
no human being could comfortably carry about with him so heavy a burden
of perfectibility. He is (as women have often fancied us) not what we
are but what she would have us be; and here, as elsewhere, even the
Ideal does not please man.




PERSONALITIES


All art is the expression of an individuality, and environment has
some influence on genius. Without question _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_ owe
much to the accidents of Miss Burney’s own experience. Hers, indeed,
was an eventful, almost romantic, life. To-day we only remember Dr.
Burney as the father of Fanny; but he was a man of mark in his own
generation, and his industrious enthusiasm was obviously infectious.
Fanny was not early distinguished among his clever children, and we
must conclude that she had something of that delicate refinement
granted her heroines, making her rather shy and diffident among the
mixed gatherings in which he took such pride and delight. As one of
her sisters remarked, this lack of self-confidence gave her at times
the appearance of hauteur; and it is quite obvious that no suspicions
could have been aroused in any of them of her capacity for “taking
notes.” Hers was always the quiet corner where “the old lady,” as
they called her at home, could observe the quality, occasionally
join in a spirited conversation, and--after her own fashion--enjoy
“the diversions.” Her characteristics, says fourteen-year-old Susan,
“seem to be sense, sensibility, and bashfulness, even to prudery.” It
would be kinder, perhaps, to credit her with modesty such as we find
expressed in her own account of _Evelina; or, A Young Lady’s Entrance
into the World_:

 “Perhaps this may seem rather a bold attempt and title for a female
 whose knowledge of the world is very confined, and whose inclinations,
 as well as situation, incline her to a private and domestic life. All
 I can urge is, that I have only presumed to trace the accidents and
 adventures to which a ‘young woman’ is liable; I have not pretended to
 shew the world what it actually is, but what it _appears_ to a young
 girl of seventeen: and so far as that, surely any girl who is past
 seventeen may safely do? The motto of my excuse shall be taken from
 Pope’s _Temple of Fame_:

  ‘In every work, regard the author’s end;
  None e’er can compass more than they intend.’”

How far she had actually experienced adventures, or at least met
characters, similar to those of her novel, her entertaining Diaries
most abundantly illustrate. One is almost ashamed before the enthusiasm
which, between domesticities considered becoming a lady, secretarial
work for Dr. Burney, and voluminous letters to her faithful friend
Daddy Crisp, the authoress accomplished so much in so comparatively
short a period.

For she had not only to “scribble” _Evelina_, but to copy it all out in
a feigned upright hand. It was natural enough that Lowndes, bookseller,
should have refused to publish without the whole manuscript, but
equally natural that she should complain:

 “This man, knowing nothing of my situation, supposed, in all
 probability, that I could sit quietly at my bureau, and write on with
 expedition and ease, till the work was finished. But so different
 was the case, that I had hardly time to write half a page a day;
 and neither my health nor inclination would allow me to continue my
 _nocturnal_ scribbling for so long a time, as to write first, and then
 copy, a whole volume. I was therefore obliged to give the attempt and
 affair entirely over for the present.”

Genius, of course, would not be stifled; and, in the end, she completed
her work within the year, gaily accepting the payment of £20 down for
the copyright, to which the publisher added £10 when its success was
assured by a sale of 2300 copies during 1778.

Frances Burney became immediately the pet of Society. The diaries
of this period are crowded with records of flattery which may seem
extravagant, if not ludicrous, to modern reticence; and she has been
criticised for repeating them. Yet for us it is fortunate that there
were “two or three persons,” for whom her diaries were written, “to
whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite delight.” They have
become history, and, as Macaulay remarks, “nothing can be more unjust
than to confound these outpourings of a kind heart, sure of perfect
sympathy, with the egotism of a blue-stocking who prates to all who
come near her about her own novel or her own volume of sonnets.”

The fact is that, by a comparison with the Early Diaries, we may feel
confident that Miss Burney was never spoilt by popularity. Inevitably
she came out of the shade, talked more as she was more often singled
out for compliments or conversation; but there is no appearance
of conceit, and little increase in self-confidence. The youthful
simplicity of her work remains her prevailing characteristic; and the
slight maturity of _Cecilia_, not always an advantage, is obviously no
more than a desire to please. It is not her own sense of dignity in
authorship, but the pride of Crisp and the affection of Dr. Johnson
which stimulates the effort. Always “instinct with the proprieties and
the delicacies implanted by careful guardians,”[16] it was her business
to “describe the world as it seems to a woman utterly preoccupied with
the thought of how she seems to the world,” to picture man “simply
and solely as a member of a family.” One recognises the limit and
single-mindedness of her aim, in her reason for abandoning drama.
She found she could not “preserve spirit and salt, and yet keep up
delicacy.”

We are all familiar enough to-day with the cruelty of the reward by
which foolish persons thought to acknowledge her prowess. The five
years’ imprisonment at Court, though it could not ultimately tame her
spirit, brought about temporary physical wreck, and seems to have
lulled for ever the desire for literary fame. We have endeavoured to
show, in an earlier chapter, that _Camilla_ is not entirely without
significance; but there can be no question that after her marriage she
wrote only for money, and, if not without individuality, yet, as it
were, to order and by rule.

We are concerned here only with her earlier years, when she was the
replica of her own heroines.

The real character of Miss Austen almost defies analysis. Contemporary
evidence, of any discrimination, is practically non-existent; her life
presents no outstanding adventure; and it is very dangerous to assume
identity between any expression in the novels and her experience or
opinion. As a matter of fact, she never even states a truth, exhibits
an emotion, or judges a case except by implication. Even the apparent
generalisations or author’s comments on life are really attuned to the
atmosphere of the particular novel in which they appear.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” we read, “that a single
man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Miss
Austen knows better. She is perfectly aware of the perverseness often
exhibited by wealthy bachelors. The sentence is no more than a most
ingenious stroke of art. It plunges us at once into the atmosphere
of Meryton and the subject of the tale. It betrays Mrs. Bennet and,
in a lesser degree, Lady Lucas. It prepares us for her vulgarity, at
once distressing, and elevating by contrast, the refinement of Jane
and Elizabeth. Never surely did a novel open with a paragraph so
suggestive. Again, the first page of _Mansfield Park_ contains a phrase
of similar significance. The author remarks: “There certainly are not
so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women
to deserve them.” Again, she is not speaking in her own person. Lady
Bertram felt this--so far as she ever formed an opinion for herself.
Mrs. Norris and Mrs. Price had personal experience of its truth. The
subtle irony reveals _their_ point of view, not Miss Austen’s.

It requires, of course, no particular subtlety to trace from her novels
the type of character she approves and loves best, her general standard
of manners and conduct, and her scorn for hypocrisy. We have even
hazarded to affirm evidence for her opinions on one or two questions of
more importance. But they do _not_ reveal her personality in detail;
and to say, with her nephew, that she possessed all the charms of all
her heroines, would be to make her inhuman.

There is, in fact, an undiscriminating conventionality about such
descriptions as we possess which gives us no real information. We are
told, for example, that

 “her carriage and deportment were quiet, yet graceful. Her features
 were separately good. Their assemblage produced an unrivalled
 expression of that cheerfulness, sensibility, and benevolence
 which were her real characteristics. Her complexion was of the
 finest texture. It might with truth be said that her eloquent blood
 spoke through her modest cheek. Her voice was extremely sweet. She
 delivered herself with fluency and precision. Indeed, she was formed
 for elegant and rational society, excelling in conversation as much
 as in composition. In the present age it is hazardous to mention
 accomplishments. Our authoress would, probably, have been inferior
 to few in such acquirements had she not been so superior to most in
 higher things.”

It would seem as if the writer were really intent on describing
perfection.

And _yet_, we are convinced personally that Miss Austen had a peculiar
charm of her own. Undoubtedly she lived among persons as empty-headed
as those she has immortalised; probably she had met Mrs. Norris,
Mr. Elton, and Mr. Collins: apparently she was happy. No doubt her
devotion to Cassandra (suggesting her partiality for sister-heroines)
counted for much; and all her family were agreeable. They had a good
deal of “sense.” Her life provided even less variety of incident than
she discovered at Longbourn or Uppercross; and, if she was fond of
reading, she knew nothing about literature. Her letters do not suggest
the uneasiness attached to the possession of a soul--as we moderns
understand it.

Yet one point merits attention and may partially reveal. There can
be no question that the very breath of her art is satire, and she is
at times even cynical. Yet the one thing we know positively of her
private life is that she was a favourite aunt, a devoted sister, a
sympathetic daughter. Now the child-lover, beloved of children, must
possess certain qualities, which prove that her cynicism was not
ingrained, misanthropic, or pessimistic; that her pleasure in fun was
neither ill-natured nor unsympathetic. There must have been strength
of character in two directions not often united. Her life was, in a
measure, isolated--from superiority. She gave more than she received.
Nor can we believe her entirely unaware of what life might have yielded
her in more equal companionship; entirely without bitterness--for
example--in the invention of Mrs. Norris. There can be no question,
we think, that life never awakened the real Jane Austen. She lived
absolutely in, and for, her art, of which the delight to her was
supreme. Yet family tradition declares, with obvious truth, that her
genius never tempted her to arrogance, affectation, or selfishness.
She worked in the family sitting-room, writing on slips of paper that
could immediately, without bustle or parade, be slipped _inside_ her
desk at the call of friendship or courtesy. At any moment she suffered
interruption without protest. The absolute self-command so obvious in
the work governed her life.

But we have always believed that one passage in _Pride and Prejudice_
does give us a suggestive glimpse--again only by implication--of very
real autobiography:

 “‘You are a great deal too apt,’ says Eliza to Jane Bennet, ‘to like
 people in general. You never see a fault in anybody. All the world
 are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a
 human being in my life.’

 “‘I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone,’ answers Jane,
 ‘but I always speak what I think.’

 “‘I know you do, and it is _that_ which makes the wonder. With _your_
 good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense
 of others. Affectation of candour is common enough--one meets it
 everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design--to take
 the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say
 nothing of the bad--belongs to you alone.’”

This is, we like to fancy, a portrait of her own sister, Cassandra.
Jane Austen herself was _not_ “a great deal too apt to like people in
general,” though she too could be marvellously tender with Marianne
Dashwood, most “silly” of heroines, and her still more ridiculous
mother. It is certain, indeed, that she never neglected even the most
tiresome “neighbours,” but she did not love them. There is evidence
enough in _Persuasion_ that she could sympathise with deep feelings,
which were necessarily suppressed in such surroundings as she gives all
her heroines, and had experienced herself.

Her reverend father, “the handsome proctor,” like most clergymen of his
generation, was essentially a country gentleman, not very much better
educated, and scarcely more strenuous, than his neighbours. His wife
took a simple and honest pride in the management of her household;
and his sons followed their father’s footsteps, entered the navy,
or pursued whatever other profession they could most _conveniently_
enter. The whole atmosphere of the vicarage was complacently material
and old-fashioned, where the ideas of progress filtered slowly and
discontent was far from being considered divine. The personal aloofness
from characters delineated, so conspicuous in her art, was borrowed
from life. Everywhere, and always, the real Jane stood aside.

Nor were there granted her any of the consolations of culture. We have
no doubt that she received no more education than might be acquired at
Mrs. Goddard’s:

 “A school, not a seminary, or an establishment, or anything which
 professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal
 acquirements with elegant morality, upon new principles and new
 systems--and where young ladies, for enormous pay, might be screwed
 out of health and into vanity--but a real, honest, old-fashioned
 boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were
 sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent out of the
 way and scramble themselves into a little education, without any
 danger of coming back prodigies.”

It needed, perhaps, some such unromantic, unruffled, and unvaried
existence, with a mind perfectly composed, to produce those six
flawless works of art which remain for us the most complete
expression of good sense, the most complete triumph over the fanciful
exaggerations of romance. Genius alone could adjust the balance with
such nicety and leave us content. She forces us, by sheer wit and
sympathy, to love and admire the very persons of all time and place who
have in themselves least to interest or attract.

The character of Charlotte Brontë, like her work, brings us at once
into a new atmosphere. All here is emotionally strenuous, if not
melodramatic. The bleak parsonage, the stern widowed father, the
vicious son, the three wonderful sisters: around and about them the
mysteries of _Wuthering Heights_. The picture of those lonely girls,
all the world to each other and nothing to the world, dreaming and
scribbling in the cold, without sympathy and without guidance, is
stamped for ever on our imagination. We know something, moreover, from
_Jane Eyre_, about their cruel experience of schooldays, something,
from _Agnes Grey_, about their noble efforts at independence. Finally,
we have studied and talked over “the Secret”--supposed to reconcile
work and life. As to the main outlines of temperament, at any rate,
there can be no question.

Charlotte Brontë’s experience of life was strictly limited: she had
little interest about the trivialities of the tea-table. But she
observed keenly, had a tenacious memory, and felt with intensity.
Without hardness or conceit, she was entirely self-centred: there is no
aloofness about her work: it centres passionately around the heroine,
reflecting her own emotional outlook. She took life seriously, like
her heroines: acutely sensitive to words and looks; caring nothing for
what did not personally affect her. No doubt there is something Irish,
something too of the grim moorlands, in that mysterious instinct which
fired Charlotte, and her sisters, to their perpetual questionings of
Providence, their burning protests against the harshness and hypocrisy
of the world. Circumstances stifle them and they must speak. Speaking,
they must strike.

Charlotte Brontë, indeed, lived almost as much aside from the world
as Jane Austen. But Haworth was not Stevenage: the Rev. Patrick was
certainly not a “handsome proctor,” and Bramwell could never have risen
in “the Service.” It was in nature, however, that the contrast is most
marked. The author of _Jane Eyre_, however shy and unsociable, was
not content to stand aloof and look on. With little enough experience
of actualities, she was for ever _making life_ for herself, sending
that plain, visionary, eager, and sensitive ego of hers out into the
world; and uttering with fiery eloquence her comments on what she
imagined herself to have done and seen. Until recently, indeed, we have
supposed that even the heart of her work, that passionate devotion
which she was the first of women to reveal, was entirely imaginative,
an _invention_ created without guidance from personal experience.
Now evidence has been published which scarcely permits doubt; that
whereas, obviously, her pupil-teacherdom at Brussels widened her
social outlook, it also awoke her heart. Charlotte Brontë, evidently,
fell in love with the “Professor” at the Pensionnat Heger; and thus
gained the memory of passion. But it may be reasonably questioned,
after all, whether the experience did much for her art. Since Monsieur
Heger, no less certainly, did not return her love, and seldom even
answered her letters, he could not have taught her the mysteries; and
as, like her heroines, she was fatally addicted to exaggeration--in
love or hate--it is not probable that her heroes--or ideal men--bear
any very real likeness to him in character. After all, she practically
“invented” him, as independent witnesses have established; and the
accident of her idealisations centring about a living man is not
particularly significant. Her attitude, and that of her heroines,
towards mankind in general, and towards “the man” in particular, is
really woven out of a strong imagination: and the essence of her being
remains a dreamer’s. _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_ are, transparently,
the work of one who created her own world for herself only; and we
need not modify this impression from any letters of hers ever printed
or written. Emotionally she was nourished on her own thoughts; and,
in her case, we may read them fearlessly in her work. It was not her
nature to suppress, or conceal, anything. _She has put herself on
record._ Here lies the essential difference between her work and Miss
Burney’s or Jane Austen’s. While they reflected, with almost unruffled
enjoyment, the surface of life, she tore off the wrappings and revealed
a Soul. That, too, was of her very self. She had missed everything that
mattered. It was at once her consolation and her revenge to project
herself into the heart of life, and tell the tale.

The character and experience of George Eliot is far more complex, like
her achievement, than that of those who preceded her. Like them, bred
in retirement, though among more strenuous surroundings, her youth
gave her also much insight into what life means to “small” people. But
there was a strong religious atmosphere around her, accident gave her
the early control of affairs, and her education--of a later date--was
more thorough. Then came the stirring of doubt, from associations with
sceptics; the professional training from practical journalism; and the
“problem” evoked by her friendship with George Henry Lewes. Life was
training her for modern work.

The intense seriousness, the active conscience of primitive faith,
remained always with her, influencing characterisation. But it was
the wider teachings of philosophy, the later experiences, and the
conscious desire after advance that made her didactic. Her letters
reveal an unexpected sentimentalism and an intense craving for personal
affection; her teachings are all interpreted by what she has read, or
inspired by men she has met; but they are in touch with real life and
directed by real thought. It was her personal experience and character
which enabled George Eliot to combine the “manners” comedy of Fanny
Burney and Jane Austen with Miss Brontë’s moral campaign; to weld the
message of woman into modernity.

She was, however, before all things, a professional student of
humanity. Though she actually commenced novelist at a comparatively
advanced age, the previous years, and every item of character, had
been a training for this work. She observed with accuracy, remembered
without effort, and studiously cultivated her natural literary
powers. Emotionally and intellectually she got the most out of life;
never, perhaps, quite letting herself go, but keenly alive to every
impression, on the alert for experience and information. It was not in
her ever to let things alone.

Such a temperament, of course, does not produce either spontaneous fun,
sleepless humour, or unbridled self-torment; but it acquires the power
of responding to all human difficulties, understanding the “problem” of
life, and sympathising in its beauty and joy. George Eliot was always
pondering about truth, considering the remedies for evil, looking
forward towards progress. Her own experience was utilised freely, with
an instinct for dramatic effect, but it is not the whole body of her
work. That was a deliberately composed art, put out as an instrument
for a given purpose, studied and ornamented. But while thus nurtured
and apart, it is also the expression of herself, the sum of her being.
Therein, like an actress, she plays many parts, putting on the mood of
each new story and living in it.

She is, in fact, a typical woman of letters, as we now understand the
term, with all the excellences and all the limitations of even the
greatest among us.


FOOTNOTES:

[16] Her stepmother.




CONCLUSION


We find, in the main, that women developed--and perfected--the domestic
novel. They made circulating libraries respectable, establishing the
right, and the power, of women to write fiction.

They carried on the traditions of Richardson and Fielding by choosing
the middle-class for subject, at first confining themselves to Society
and the County, but extending--with George Eliot--to all “Professions,”
and to a study of the poor. They made novels a reflection, and a
criticism, of life.

It seems curious that, with the possible exception of Charlotte Brontë,
women were all stern realists: while even her imaginativeness can
scarcely be called romantic. The fact is, probably, that the heroes
and heroines of romance were mainly conceived for young ladies, and
popularly supposed to represent their ideal. Wherefore, when women
began to express themselves, they--more or less consciously--set out
to expose this fallacy: to prove that they could enjoy and face real
life. No school of writers, indeed, has more fearlessly or more
persistently created their characters from flesh and blood than the
school represented by Jane Austen and George Eliot. None has dwelt more
persistently on the trivial details of everyday life, the conquests of
observation. Whether concerned, like Miss Burney, with the Comedy of
Manners; or, like George Eliot, with the Analysis of Soul; they have
one and all found their inspiration in human nature. And, in reality,
this was the main progress achieved in fiction between Richardson and
the nineteenth century--the growth on which the true modern novel was
built up. Critics, indeed, have treated the “romance” and the “novel”
as independent entities; and if we limit the term romance to work
preceding _Pamela_, we may accept their dictum. There is an essential
difference between “making up” characters from a pseudo-ideal of the
possibilities in human nature, and reflecting life. The old system, no
doubt, was unhealthy in two ways: The ideals not well-chosen, being
composed by high-flown exaggeration; and they were so mingled with
actuality as to deceive the young person. For that matter the complaint
is still living that girls and boys continually fancy real life will
prove “just like a novel.” It does not, of course, differ greatly
from those of Jane Austen or George Eliot. The former, in fact, was
accused--in her own day--of setting too high a price on “prudence” in
matrimony; and the latter of encouraging a gloomy outlook.

Obviously realism, as here applied, has no connection with that
Continental variety of the art which has more recently usurped the
name. Women-writers, of this era, had not developed the cult of
Ugliness, they did not confound painting with photography, they did not
busy themselves with the morbid or the abnormal. Their works are not
documents, but revelations. They dwell on manners, without ignoring
their spiritual significance. To-day we have some use for the new
realism, while dreading its predominance. They had none.

In enumerating the classes, or types, of humanity with whom the
women-writers were mainly concerned, we were witnessing, of course,
the allied progress of history. It was during the second half of the
eighteenth, and the first of the nineteenth, centuries that the great
English middle-class steadily grew in power and importance, boldly
educating itself for influence,--before labour was heard in the land.

Fanny Burney has given us the “classes” at play; we fancy that Jane
Austen, betraying their empty-mindedness, must have longed for, if she
did not actually anticipate, better things; Charlotte Brontë utters
the first protest, indicating a struggle for existence; George Eliot
finds them busy about the meaning of life and its possibilities. Thus,
finally, we read of real workers--men and women with the world at their
feet, building an Empire, facing problems, questioning the gods.

And, in their own particular sphere,--the revelation of Woman,--we
have seen already the same advance. Each of them gives us, for
her own generation, a “new woman”; creating, by the revelation of
possibilities, an actual type. By teaching us what was “going on” _in
women_, they taught women to be themselves. They opened the doors of
Liberty towards Progress.

Minor achievements, on the other hand, were mostly directed towards
the extension of subject matter, and the provision of new channels
for fiction. Mrs. Radcliffe--who stood aside from the line of
advance--established the School of Terror, applying romance methods to
melodrama, with more power than we can find elsewhere in English. Maria
Edgeworth introduced the story for children, which was not a tract,
but the literary answer to “Tell me a story,” the exploitation of
nursery tales told by mothers from time immemorial. This was developed
by Harriet Martineau and Charlotte Yonge, bearing fruit later in
libraries of most varied achievement. As we all know, there have been
several works of genius written expressly for children (as were not the
_Pilgrim’s Progress_, _Robinson Crusoe_, and _Gulliver’s Travels_);
innumerable delightful stories of a similar nature, and much inferior
work.

The earlier women-writers set an excellent example in this field, if
they retained overmuch moralising. They gave us a few nursery classics
which show practical insight into the child’s mind, and the gift of
holding his interest by healthy wonder. We need only compare _Sandford
and Merton_ with _Frank_ to recognise their peculiar fitness for such
work.

The invention (by Mrs. Craik) of the “novel for the young person”
is an allied achievement. It was developed by Charlotte Yonge, and
has been always a legitimate province for women. Its dangers are
over-sentimentalism (kin to Romance proper) and the idealism of the
Woman’s Man. Mrs. Craik gave us one type in _John Halifax, Gentleman_;
there are two in Miss Yonge’s _Heir of Redclyffe_.

It must be noted further that Harriet Martineau exploited philanthropy,
and introduced the didactic element developed by George Eliot. Most
women are born preachers--even Jane Austen occasionally points a
moral--and this characteristic became prevalent early in their work. It
was employed sometimes in the defence, or the exposure, of particular
religious tenets; at others, on questions of pure ethics. There is
a sense, of course, in which every story of life must carry its own
moral; but George Eliot and most of the minor novelists obtrude this
matter. In many cases the lesson is the motive, which is false art.
However, the “novel with a purpose” clearly has come to stay. It
outlived the period with which we are concerned, and is still vital.
Speaking generally, the earlier women novelists contented themselves
with raising the standard of domestic morality, upholding the family,
and hinting at _one_ ideal for the _two_ sexes. George Eliot, indeed,
went into individual cases with much detail; but we note in all that
their pet abomination is hypocrisy and cant.

Finally, and most important of all in outside influence, Maria
Edgeworth invented the “national” novel--developed by Susan Ferrier
and Mrs. Oliphant. We have noted already that in banishing the stage
Irishman Miss Edgeworth inspired _Waverley_; and the list of more
recent examples (sprung from India, the “kailyard,” the moorlands,
and a hundred localities) would prove too formidable for passing
enumeration. Her instinctive patriotism has sprung a mine that is
practically inexhaustible and has given us much of our best work. The
“Hardy” country and all “local colour” are similarly inspired. It is
not too much to say that in this matter Miss Edgeworth introduced an
entirely new element, only second in importance to the revelation of
femininity, which is woman’s chief contribution to the progress of
Fiction.

While women were thus developing English fiction, with no rival of
genius except Scott in his magnificent isolation, men had in some way
advanced from Richardson to Thackeray and Dickens. It is worth noticing
how far the two Victorian novelists showed the influence of feminine
work, in what respects they reverted to the eighteenth century, and
what new elements they introduced.

Both are still middle-class and, in one sense, domestic realists.
Thackeray satirises Society (like Miss Burney and Jane Austen); Dickens
works on manners, expounds causes, and takes up the poor. Both caught
an enthusiasm for history from Scott, in which women did nothing of the
first importance. Thackeray capped Lady Susan with Barry Lyndon, and
Dickens produced a few overwrought washes of childhood--which women,
curiously enough, never treated in their regular novels.

A certain resemblance in scope and arrangement has been noted already
between _Vanity Fair_ and _Evelina_; but, speaking generally, it is
obvious that Thackeray writes of Society more as a man of the world,
and with broader insight, than either Miss Burney or Miss Austen.
He not only observes, but criticises. One might say that, like all
moderns, he feels morally responsible for the world. The “manners”
which constitute the humour of Dickens are more varied and, on the
other hand, more caricatured than those of the women-writers. His fury
against social evils is more public-spirited and less specialised; his
knowledge of the poor more intimate and genuinely sympathetic.

They have learnt, it would seem, from women to elaborate details in
observation, to depend on truthful pictures of everyday life, avoiding
romance-characterisation or the aid of adventure in the composition of
their plots. In fact, the development from Richardson’s revolution is
consecutive, taken up by the Victorians where the women left it. New
side-issues are introduced; the novel becomes more complex with the
increased activities of civilisation, and grows with the growth of the
middle classes. It is now the mouthpiece of what Commerce and Education
began to feel and express. But the _direction_ of progress is not
changed.

So far it may fairly be said that Thackeray and Dickens have followed
the women’s lead, and bear witness to their influence.

Yet Thackeray reverts, particularly in _Pendennis_, to the “wild-oats”
plot of Fielding; Dickens is quite innocent of artistic construction,
as perfected in Jane Austen; and neither of them seems to have
benefited at all from the extraordinary revelation of womanhood which
we have traced from its earliest source.

Thackeray’s heroines are, one and all, obviously made by a man for men.
Amelia is a hearth-rug, with a pattern of pretty flowers. Beatrice
and Blanche are variants of the eternal flirt--as man reads her. Lady
Castlewood, Helen and Laura Pendennis are of the women who spend their
lives waiting for the right man. Ethel Newcome is a man’s dream; and we
venture to fancy that if ever a woman be born with genius to draw Becky
Sharpe, she would find _something_ to add to the picture.

The case of Dickens is even more desperate. His “pretty housemaids,”
indeed, are “done to a turn”; and Nancy is of the immortals. He
could illustrate with melodramatic intensity certain feminine
characteristics, good or evil, tragic or comic. But all his heroines
belong to a few obvious waxwork types--the idiotic “pet” or the
fireside “angel”; the “comfort” or the prig, composed of curls,
blushes, and giggles; looks of reproach and tender advice. Possibly
Dora is rather more aggravating than Dolly Varden, Agnes is wiser than
Kate Nickleby, but they all work by machinery, with visible springs.

It was reserved for George Meredith to understand women.




APPENDIX

LIST OF MINOR WRITERS

(Their dates will indicate their place in our history of development:
where they are not alluded to.)


 MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE (1624-1673), in her _CCXI Sociable
 Letters_ (1664), tells an imaginary narrative by correspondence, which
 she describes as “rather scenes than letters, for I have endeavoured
 under cover of letters to express the humours of mankind.” Also author
 of _Nature’s Pictures drawn by Fancie’s pencil_ (1656).

 FRANCES SHERIDAN.--Her _Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph, extracted
 from her own Journal_ (1761), made a name by its supreme melancholy.
 The heroine suffers from obeying her mother, and receives no
 reward. Dr. Johnson “did not know whether she had a right, on moral
 principles, to make her readers suffer so much.”

 MISS CLARA REEVE (1725-1803) began to write novels at fifty-one,
 and attempted in _The Old English Baron_ (1777) to compromise with
 the School of Terror, by limiting herself to “the utmost _verge_ of
 probability.” Her “groan” is not interesting, and Scott complains of
 “a certain creeping and low line of narrative and sentiment”; adding,
 however, that perhaps “to be somewhat _prosy_ is a secret mode of
 securing a certain necessary degree of credulity from the hearers of a
 ghost-story.”

 ANNA SEWARD (1747-1809), a florid and picturesque poetess, whose
 verse-novel _Louisa_ was valued in her day. She has a place in Scott’s
 _Lives of the Novelists_.

 CHARLOTTE SMITH (1749-1806).--Her _The Old Manor House_ reveals
 independent, and novel, appreciation of scenery, illustrated by an
 unobtrusive familiarity with natural history. Her plots “bear the
 appearance of having been hastily run up,” but her characterisation is
 vigorous. There is a “tone of melancholy” throughout.

 HARRIET (1766-1851) and SOPHIA (1750-1824) LEE wrote some of the
 earliest historical novels--_The Recess; or, A Tale of other Times_
 (1783), introducing Queen Elizabeth and the “coarse virulence that
 marks her manners,” and the _Canterbury Tales_, from which Byron
 borrowed.

 MRS. BENNET, whose _Anna; or, The Memoirs of a Welsh Heiress_ (1785)
 is a bad imitation of Miss Burney, “with a catchpenny interspersion.”

 REGINA MARIA ROCHE, author of the once popular _The Children of the
 Abbey_ (1798). Richardson, diluted with Mackenzie--in “elegant”
 language.

 MRS. OPIE (1769-1853).--One of her best stories, _Adeline Mowbray; or,
 The Mother and Daughter_ (1804), is partially founded on the life of
 Godwin, and shows the influence of his theories.

 JANE PORTER (1776-1850), author of _Thaddeus of Warsaw_ and _The
 Scottish Chiefs_, who claimed unjustly to have “invented” the
 historical romance, _copied_ by Scott. Very famous in her day.

 Also ANNA MARIA PORTER (1780-1832), author of _Don Sebastian_.

 MRS. BRUNTON (1778-1818), author of the excellent _Self-Control_
 (1811) and _Discipline_ (1814), which were overshadowed by Susan
 Ferrier. Lacking humour, her morality becomes tiresome, but she could
 draw living characters. The Highland experiences of her heroine,
 who, after marrying a minister, retained “a little of her coquettish
 sauciness,” are significant for their date.

 LADY MORGAN (1783-1859), as Miss Sydney Owenson, published _Wild Irish
 Girl_ (1806), which is a fairly spirited réchauffé of all things
 Celtic. Thackeray found here the name Glorvina, meaning “sweet voice.”

 HENRIETTA MOSSE (otherwise Rouvière), whose _A Peep at our Ancestors_
 (1807) and other novels have been described as “blocks of spiritless
 and commonplace historic narrative.”

 ANNA ELIZABETH BRAY (1789-1883), author of _The Protestant_, various
 competent historical romances, and “local novels.”

 MRS. SHERWOOD, an evangelical propagandist, who naïvely enforced her
 views in _The Fairchild Family_ (1818) and _Little Henry and his
 Bearer_.

 ELIZABETH SEWELL set the style of High-Church propaganda, developed
 by Miss Yonge. Her chief tales, _Gertrude_ and _Amy Herbert_ (1844),
 are rigidly confined to everyday life. The characters, if living, are
 uninteresting; and her morals are obtrusive.

 CATHERINE GORE (1799-1861), author of over seventy tales; and, in her
 own day, “the leader in the novel of fashion.”

 LADY G. FULLERTON (1812-1885), author of _Emma Middleton_, who shares
 with Miss Sewell the beginnings of High Church propaganda in fiction.

 ANNE CALDWELL (MRS. MARSH), one of the best writers of the “revival”
 in domesticity. Her _Emilia Wyndham_ (1846) was unfairly described as
 the “book where the woman breaks her desk open with her head.” Though
 contemporary with _Pendennis_, has no ease in style.

 MRS. ARCHER CLIVE (1801-1873), author of an early and well-told story
 of crime, entitled _Paul Ferroll_ (1855).

 MRS. HENRY WOOD (1814-1887).--A good plot-maker, whose _East
 Lynne_--both as book and play--has been phenomenally popular for many
 years; though _The Channings_, and others, are better literature.




INDEX OF AUTHORS AND TITLES


  _Abbess, The_, 146.

  _Absentee, The_, 63.

  _Adam Bede_, 191, 204, 205, 220, 235.

  _Agnes Grey_, 184, 275.

  _Atherton_, 142.

  Austen, Jane, 17, 52, 55, 66-116, 117-30, 140, 152, 155, 156, 164,
  166, 170, 172, 189, 207, 209, 211, 213, 219, 227-9, 231-3, 235, 237,
  238-42, 244, 248, 250-2, 255, 268-75, 276, 280, 283, 284, 285, 289.


  _Barry Lyndon_, 108, 289.

  Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 2-5.

  _Beleaguered City, The_, 191.

  _Belford Regis_, 142.

  _Belinda_, 62, 130.

  Brontë, Anne, 184-6.

  -- Charlotte, 164-78, 180, 183, 185, 188, 190, 209, 210, 213, 229,
  230, 233-4, 236, 237, 252-5, 257, 275-8, 280, 282, 285.

  -- Emily, 179-84, 185.

  Burney, Fanny (Madame D’Arblay), 2, 7-53, 59, 62, 67, 68, 70, 91,
  117-30, 131, 137, 152, 155, 164, 170, 209, 211, 213, 226-7, 230-1,
  235, 237, 238, 243, 246-250, 253, 255, 263-8, 280, 283, 289.

  -- Dr., 11, 68.

  Byron, Lord, 58.


  _Cameos of English History_, 199.

  _Camilla_, 35-53, 127, 128, 133, 226, 267.

  _Castle of Otranto_, 56.

  _Castle Rackrent_, 63.

  _Cecilia_, 13, 15, 48, 85, 118-23, 127, 128, 130, 140, 237, 238, 263,
  266.

  _Chronicles of Carlingford, The_, 191-9.

  _Clarissa_, 14, 67, 245.

  _Cœlebs in Search of a Wife_, 64.

  Crabbe, 74, 141.

  Craik, Mrs., 186-8, 189, 199, 258-62, 286, 287.

  _Cranford_, 152-62.

  _Curate-in-Charge_, 189.


  _Daisy Chain, The_, 200-3.

  _Daniel Deronda_, 2, 217, 230.

  _David Simple_, 5.

  Day, Thomas, 60.

  _Deerbrook_, 150.

  Defoe, Daniel, 1, 7, 108.

  _Destiny_, 135, 139.

  Dickens, Charles, 289-92.

  _Domestic Manners of the Americans_, 146.


  Edgeworth, Maria, 32, 60-3, 81, 131, 187, 286, 288.

  Eliot, George, 167, 190, 191, 199, 204-25, 229-30, 233, 235-6, 237,
  242, 243, 244, 255-57, 278-81, 282-284, 285, 287.

  _Émile_, 61.

  _Emma_, 80, 94-6, 121, 123, 242.

  _Essay on Irish Bulls_, 62.

  _Evelina_, 2, 11, 15, 18 _seq._, 66, 71, 85, 121, 123, 124, 125-6,
  129, 140, 237, 250, 263, 265.


  _Felix Holt_, 218, 230.

  _Female Quixote_, 5.

  _Female Spectator_, 5.

  Ferrier, Susan, 131-40.

  Fielding, Henry, 5, 10, 13, 26, 30, 55, 282, 290.

  -- Sarah, 5.

  _Frank_, 61, 286.

  _Frankenstein_, 143-5.


  Galt, John, 189.

  Gaskell, Mrs., 152-63, 165.

  Godwin, William, 143.

  Goldsmith, Oliver, 10, 14.

  _Gulliver’s Travels_, 286.


  Hardy, Thomas, 288.

  Hazlitt, 32.

  _Heir of Redclyffe_, 257, 258.

  Heywood, Mrs., 5.

  _Hour and the Man, The_, 150.


  Inchbald, Mrs., 59, 60.

  _Inheritance_, 135, 139.


  _Jane Eyre_, 2, 165, 170, 172-6, 182, 234, 275, 276, 278.

  _John Halifax, Gentleman_, 187, 188, 190, 203, 258-62.

  Johnson, Dr., 11, 12, 13, 30, 52, 53, 267.

  Jonson, Ben, 30.


  _Lady Susan_, 105-16, 128, 289.

  Lamb, Charles, 140.

  _Lances of Lynwood, The_, 199.

  Lennox, Charlotte, 5.

  _Letters to Literary Ladies_, 61.

  _Little Duke, The_, 199.

  Lockhart, John Gibson, 172-175, 182.


  Macaulay, 6, 27, 241, 266.

  Mackenzie, Henry, 60.

  _Man of Feeling_, 59.

  Manley, Mrs., 5.

  _Mansfield Park_, 72, 96-100, 122, 124, 139, 233, 269.

  Marivaux, 67.

  _Marriage_, 135, 136, 139.

  Martineau, Harriet, 148-52, 187, 233, 286, 287.

  _Mary Barton_, 163.

  Meredith, George, 292.

  _Mill on the Floss, The_, 243, 256.

  _Miss Marjoribanks_, 192-5.

  Mitford, Mary Russell, 140-3, 207.

  _Moral Tales_, 61.

  More, Hannah, 63-5, 187.

  _Mysteries of Udolpho_, 21-23, 54-9, 134, 239, 250.


  _Nature and Art_, 60.

  _New Atlantis, The_, 5.

  _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, 131, 142.

  North, Christopher (Prof. Wilson), 131, 142.

  _North and South_, 162.

  _Northanger Abbey_, 56, 80, 91-3, 118, 121, 125-7, 250.


  Oliphant, Laurence, 191.

  -- Mrs., 188-99.

  _Oroonoko_, 3-5.

  _Our Village_, 140-3.


  _Pamela_, 5, 7, 14, 67, 283.

  _Parent’s Assistant_, 61.

  _Peasant and Prince_, 150.

  _Pendennis_, 290.

  _Peregrine Pickle_, 72, 76.

  _Persuasion_, 80, 100-4, 121, 122, 252, 273.

  _Pilgrim’s Progress_, 286.

  _Playfellow Series_, 149, 150.

  Ploughman Poet, see The “Shepherd.”

  Pope, Alexander, 9, 264.

  _Practical Education_, 61.

  _Pride and Prejudice_, 85-9, 118-20, 124, 125, 127, 139, 238, 242,
  272.

  _Pursuit of Literature, The_, 55.


  Radcliffe, Mrs., 21-23, 32, 50, 54-9, 81, 91, 118, 167, 285.

  Richardson, Samuel, 1, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 50, 55, 67, 72, 229, 245,
  248, 253, 282, 290.

  _Robinson Crusoe_, 286.

  _Romola_, 217, 230, 235.

  Rousseau, 3, 61.


  _Salem Chapel_, 195-9.

  _Sandford and Merton_, 60, 286.

  Scott, Sir Walter, 59, 72, 81, 131, 132, 288.

  _Sense and Sensibility_, 2, 89-91, 122, 126, 139, 227, 238.

  Shaw, Bernard, 26.

  Shelley, Mary, 143-5.

  “Shepherd,” The (that is, James Hogg), 7, 131, 142.

  _Shirley_, 169, 170, 176-8, 234.

  _Simple Story_, 60.

  _Sir Charles Grandison_, 24, 246-9.

  _Sketch Book, The_, 140.

  Smith, Sydney, 64.

  Smollett, Tobias, 10, 13.

  Sterne, Laurence, 10, 13.


  _Tales of Fashionable Life_, 62.

  Thackeray, W. M., 108, 112, 289-91.

  _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, 184.

  _Tom Jones_, 72, 76.

  Trollope, Mrs., 145-8.


  _Vanity Fair_, 227, 289.

  _Vicar of Wrexhill, The_, 146.

  _Villette_, 165, 168, 169, 170, 176, 234, 278.


  Walpole, Horace, 56, 57.

  _Wanderer, The_, 127.

  _Waverley_, 72.

  Whately, Archbishop, 80, 81.

  _Wives and Daughters_, 162.

  _Wuthering Heights_, 179-84, 275.


  Yonge, Charlotte M., 199-203, 257, 258, 286, 287.


PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURGH




Transcriber’s Notes

Errors in punctuation have been fixed.

Page 14: “That mar-marvellous” changed to “That marvellous”

Page 139: “Aunts in _Marrriage_” changed to “Aunts in _Marriage_”

Page 274: “Mrs. Goodard’s” changed to “Mrs. Goddard’s” and “when young
ladies” changed to “where young ladies”



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