| | | | | | A vigorous and pertinacious effort has of late been made to | persuade mankind that beauty in women is a matter of very | little moment. As long as literature was more or less a | man’s vocation, an opposite tendency prevailed; and a | successful novelist would as soon have thought of flying as | of driving a team of ugly heroines through three volumes. | The rapid and portentous increase of authoresses changed | the current of affairs. As a rule, authoresses do not care | much about lovely women; and they must naturally despise | the miserable masculine weakness which is led captive by a | pretty face, even if it be only upon paper. They can have no | patience with such feebleness, and it may well seem to | them to be a high and important mission to help to put it | down. | It became. Accordingly, the fashion at one time among the | feminine writers of fiction to make all their fascinating | heroines plain girls with plenty of soul, and to show, by a | series of thrilling love adventures, how completely in the | long run the plain girls had the best of it. There is a regular | type of ideal young lady in women’s novels, to which we | have at last become accustomed. She is not at all a | | perfect beauty. Her features are not as finely chiseled as a | Greek statue; she is taller, we are invariably told, than the | model height, her nose is retrousse; and

"in | some lights"

an unfavourable critic might affirm that | her hair was positively tawny. But there is a well of feeling | in her big brown eyes, which, when united to genius, | invariably bowls over the hero of the book. And the passion | she excites is of that stirring kind which eclipses all others. | Through the first two volumes the predestined lover flirts | with the beauties who despise her, dances with them under | her eye, and wears their colors in her presence. But at the | end of the third an expressive glance tells her that all is | right, and that big eyes and a big soul have won the race in | a canter. Jane Eyre was perhaps the first triumphant success | of this particular school of art. And Jane Eyre certainly | opened the door to a long train of imitators. For many years | every woman’s novel had got in it some dear and noble | creature, generally underrated, and as often as not in | embarrassed circumstances, who used to capture her | husband by sheer force of genius, and by pretending not to | notice him when he came into the room. Some pleasant | womanly enthusiasts even went further, and invented | heroines with tangled hair and inky fingers. We do not feel | perfectly certain that Miss Yonge, for instance, has not | married her inky Minerva to nicer and more pious | husbands, as a rule, than her uninky ones. The advantage of | the view that ugly heroines are the most charming is | obvious, if only the world could be | | brought to adopt it. It is a well-meant protest in favour of | what may be called, in these days of political excitement, | the

"rights"

of plain girls. It is very hard to think | that a few more freckles or a quarter of an inch of extra | chin should make all the difference in life to women, and | those of them who are intellectually fitted to play a shining | part in society or literature may be excused for rebelling | against the masculine heresy of believing in beauty only. | Whenever such women write, the constant moral they | preach to us is that beauty is a delusion and a snare. This is | the moral of Hetty in Adam Bede, and it is in | the unsympathetic and cold way in which Hetty is | described that one catches glimpses of the sex of the | consummate author of the story. She is quite alive to | Hetty’s plump arms and pretty cheeks. She likes to pat her | and watch her, as if Hetty were a cat, or some other sleek | and supple animal. But we feel that the writer of | Adam Bede is eyeing Hetty all over from the | beginning to the end, and considering in herself the while | what fools men are. It would be unjust and untrue to say | that George Eliot in all her works does not do ample | justice, in a noble and generous way, to the power of | female beauty. The heroines of Romola and | Felix Holt prove distinctly that she does. But | one may fairly doubt whether a man could have painted | Hetty. When one sees the picture, one understands its truth; | but men who draw pretty faces usually do so with more | enthusiasm. | A similar sort of protest may be found lurking in | | a great many women’s novels against the popular opinion | that man is the more powerful animal, and that a wife is at | best a domestic appanage of the husband. Authoresses are | never weary of attempts to set this right. They like to prove, | what is continually true, that feminine charms are the lever | that moves the world, and that the ideal woman keeps her | husband and all about her straight. In religious novels | woman’s task is to exercise the happiest influence on the | man’s theological opinions. Owing to the errors he has | imbibed from the study of a false and shallow philosophy, | he sees no good in going to church twice on Sundays, or | feels that he cannot heartily adopt all the expressions in the | Athanasian creed. It is the heroine’s mission to cure this | mental malady; to point out to him, from the impartial point | of view of those who have never committed the folly of | studying Kant or Hegel, how thoroughly superficial Kant | and Hegel are; and to remind him by moonlight, and in the | course of spiritual flirtation on a balcony, of the unutterable | truths in theology which only a woman can naturally | discern. We are far from wishing to intimate that there is | not a good deal of usefulness in such feminine points of | view. The argumentum ad sexum, if not a | logical, is often no doubt a practical one, and women are | right to employ it whenever they can make it tell. And as it | would be impossible to develop it to any considerable | extent in a dry controversial work, authoresses have no | other place to work it in except in a romance. What they do | for religion in pious novels, they do | | for other things in productions of a more strictly secular | kind. | There is, for instance, a popular and prevalent fallacy that | women ought to be submissive to, and governed by, their | lords and masters. In feminine fiction we see a very | wholesome reaction against this mistaken supposition. The | hero of the female tale is often a poor, frivolous, easily led | person. When he can escape from his wife’s eye, he | speculates heavily on stock Exchange, goes in under the | influence of evil advisers for any sort of polite swindling, | and forgets, or is ill-tempered towards, the inestimable | treasure he has at home. On such occasions the heroine of | the feminine novel shines out in all her majesty. She is kind | and patient to her husband’s faults, except that when he is | more than usually idiotic her eyes flash, and her nostrils | dilate with a sort of grand scorn, while her knowledge of | life and business is displayed at critical moments to save | him from ruin. When everyone | else deserts him, she takes | a cab into the city, and employs some clever friend, who | has always been hopelessly in love with her ~~ and for | whom she entertains, unknown to her husband, a Platonic | brotherly regard ~~ to intervene in the nick of time, and to | arrest her husband’s fall. | In a story called Sowing the Wind, which has | recently been published, the authoress (for we assume, in | spite of the ambiguous assertion on the title-page, that the | pen which wrote it was not really a man’s) goes to very | great length. The hero, St. John Aylott, is always snubbing | and lecturing Isola, whom | | He married when she was half a child, and whom he treats | as a child long after she has become a great and glorious | woman. He administers the doctrine of conjugal authority | to her in season and out of season, and his object is to | convert her into a loving feminine slave. Against this | revolting theory her nature rebels. Though she preserves | her wifely attachment to a man whom she has once thought | worthy of better things, her respect dies away, and at last | she openly defies him when he wants her, in contravention | of her plain duty, not to adopt as her son a deserted orphan-boy. | At this point her character stands out in noble contrast | to his. She does adopt the boy, and brings him to live with | her in spite of all; and when St. John is unnaturally peevish | at its childish squalling, Isola bears his fretful | animadversions with a patient dignity that touches the | hearts of all about her. | Any husband who can go on preaching about conjugal | obedience through three volumes to a splendid creature | who is his wife, must have something wrong about his | mind. And something wrong about St. John’s mind there | ultimately proves to be. It flashes across Isola that this is | the case, and before long her worst suspicions are | confirmed. At last St. john breaks out into open lunacy, and | dies deranged ~~ a fate which is partly the cause, and partly | the consequence, of his continual indulgence in such wild | theories about the relations of man and wife. It is not every | day that we have the valuable lesson of the rights of wives | so plainly or so practically put before | | us, but when it is put before us, we recognize the service | that may be conferred on literature and society by lady | authors. To assert the great cause of the independence of | the female sex is one of the ends of feminine fiction, just as | the assertion of the rights of plain girls is another. | Authoresses do not ask for what Mr. Mill wishes them to | have ~~ a vote for the borough, or perhaps a seat in | parliament. They do ask that young women should have a | fair matrimonial chance, independently of such trivial | considerations as good looks, and that after marriage they | should have the right to despise their husbands whenever | duty and common sense tell them it is proper to do so. | The odd thing is that the heroines of whom authoresses are | so fond in novels, are not the heroines whom other women | like in real life. | Even the popular authoresses of the day, who are always | producing some lovely pantheress in their stories, and | making her achieve an endless series of impossible | exploits, would not care much about a lovely pantheress in | a drawing-room to a country-house; and are not perhaps in | the habit of meeting any. The fact is that the vast majority | of women who write novels do not draw upon their | observation for their characters so much as upon their | imagination. In some respects this is curious enough. For | when women observe, they observe acutely and to a good | deal of purpose. Those of them, however, who take to the | manufacture of fiction have generally done so because at | some portion of their career they have been thrown back | upon themselves. They began perhaps to write when | circumstances | | made them feel isolated form the rest of their little world, | and in a spirit of sickly concentration upon their own | thoughts. | A woman with a turn for literary work who notices that she | is distanced, as far as success or admiration goes, by rivals | inferior in mental capacity to herself, flies eagerly to the | society of her own fancies, and makes her pen her greatest | friend. It is the lot of many girls to pass their childhood or | youth in a somewhat monotonous round of domestic duties, | and frequently in a narrow domestic circle, with which, | except for natural affection, they may have no great | intellectual sympathy. The stage of intellectual fever | through which able men have passed when they were | young is replaced, in the case of girls of talent, by stage of | moral morbidity. At first this finds vent in hymns, and it | turns in the end to novels. Few clever young ladies have not | written religious poetry at one period of other of their | history, and few that have done so, stop there without going | further. It is a great temptation to console oneself for the | shortcomings of the social life around, by building up an | imaginary picture of social life as it might be, full of | romantic adventures and pleasant conquests. | In manufacturing her heroines, the young recluse author | puts on paper what she would herself like to be, and what | she thinks might be if only her eyes were bluer, her purse | longer, or men more wise and discerning. In painting the | slights offered to her favorite ideal, she conceives the | slights that might possibly be offered to herself, and the | triumphant | | way in which she would (under somewhat more auspicious | circumstances) delight to live them down and trample them | under foot. The vexations and the annoyances she describes | with considerable spirit and accuracy. The triumph is the | representation of her own delicious dreams. The grand | character of the imaginary victim is but a species of | phantom of her own self, taken, like the German’s camel, | from the depths of her own self-consciousness, and | projected into cloudland. This is the reason why | authoresses enjoy dressing up a heroine who is ill-used. | They know the sensation of social martyrdom, and it is a | gentle sort of revenge upon the world to publish a novel | about an underrated martyr, whose merits are recognized, | in the end, either before or after her decease. They are | probably not conscious of the precise work they are | performing. They are not aware that their heroine | represents what they believe they themselves would prove | to be under in possible circumstances provided they had | only golden hair and a wider sphere of action. | This is but another and a larger phase of a phenomenon | which all of us have become familiar with who have ever | had a large acquaintance with young ladies’ poems. They | all write about death with a pertinacity that is positively | astounding. It is not that the young people actually want to | die. But they like the idea that their family circle will find | out when it is too late, all the mistakes and injustices it has | committed towards them, and that this world will perceive | that it has been entertaining unawares | | an angel, just as the angel has taken flight upwards to | another. The juvenile aspirant commences with revenging | her wrongs in heaven, but it occurs to her before long that | she can with equal facility have them revenged upon earth. | Poetry gives way to prose, and hymnology to fiction. The | element of self-consciousness, unknown to herself, still | continues to prevail, and to color the character of the | heroines she turns out. Of course great authoresses shake | themselves free from it. Real genius is independent of sex, | and firs-rate writers, whether they are men or women, are | not morbidly in love with an idealized portrait of | themselves. | But the poorer or less worthy class of feminine novelists | seldom escape from the fatal influence of egotism. | Women’s heroines, except in the case of the best artists, are | conceptions borrowed, not from without, but from within. | The consequence is that there is a sameness about them | which becomes at last distasteful. The conception of the | injured wife or the glorified governess is one which was a | novelty fifteen or twenty years ago, while it cannot be said | any longer to be lively or entertaining. As literature has | grown to be a woman’s occupation, we are afraid that | glorified governesses in fiction will, like the poor, be | always with us, and continue to the end to run their bright | course of universal victory. The most, perhaps, that can be | hoped is that they will in the long run take the wind out of | the sails of the glorified adulteresses and murderesses | which at present seem the latest and most successful efforts | of feminine art.