Chapter V (7)

The reproduction of the bare outlines of the story of _Women_ is an easy matter compared to that of Maturin’s earlier novels; what Scott wrote in the _Edinburgh Review_ with reference to the style, is equally true of the construction of the book: ‘We observe, with pleasure, that Mr. Maturin has put his genius under better regulation than in his former publications, and retrenched that luxuriance of language, and too copious use of ornament, which distinguishes the authors and orators of Ireland, whose exuberance of imagination sometimes places them in the predicament of their honest countryman, who complained of being run away with by his legs.’ Nevertheless it is the form which, even here, is most subject to criticism. The book can be divided into two principal parts, the first of which comprises the events happening before Zaira’s journey to Paris with De Courcy, while the second is devoted to the analysis of her mental sufferings after her separation from him; the experiences of De Courcy in the French metropolis, and the closing scenes in Dublin, are allowed comparatively little space. The description of the struggles of Zaira clearly is of secondary importance for the development of the plot, where it thus makes a hiatus of extraordinary length. The narrative is, besides, now and then broken by letters and discussions all of which are not kept within proper bounds. The positive merits, however, of each separate part of the work, more than atone for any lack of proportion in its construction.

Of all the scenes in the book, those in the first part dealing with the Methodist circles of Dublin, unquestionably are the most interesting. Maturin often said that he was no judge of his own works, but he was not mistaken in seeing the main virtue of _Women_ in that it bears ‘some resemblance to common life.’ Formerly, as has been seen, Maturin’s ideas of his special powers had led him carefully to avoid the sphere of ‘common life,’ both in his treatment of external incident and, still more, of emotion; but the fact is that those powers, when ripened into maturity, were distinguished by a versatility not to be confined to any special style of fiction. In _Melmoth_ he returned, with undiminished powers, to the field of pure imagination, against which the preface to _Women_ denotes but a momentary reaction. It was not, perhaps, for artistic reasons only that Maturin, in the present work, described an aspect of common life as led in the rigidly Calvinistic community; the exposure of the less amiable qualities of the sect might have been a not unwelcome side-issue for him, considering the vast difference of his own views from those of the ‘evangelical people,’ at whose instance the peculiarities of Maturin himself had, no doubt, received much damnation. Yet although there certainly is an under-current of satire, that satire never has a ring of personal animosity; on the contrary, it is relieved by a tone of genuine humour and brightened, above all, by the introduction of the angelic figure of Eva. The pursuits and occupations going on in the house of Wentworth, the whole atmosphere of a place where Calvinistic pamphlets are the only literature that is tolerated, and the only music ever enjoyed consists of evangelical hymns--all this is reflected in a manner the very graphicness of which suggests impartiality. The household bears the stamp of its master, who is incapable of cherishing more than one idea at a time:

His manners were repulsive, his understanding narrow, and his principles inflexibly rigid; his mind was rather tenacious than strong; what little he knew, he knew thoroughly, and what he once acquired he retained for ever. Early in life he had made a large fortune with a spotless character, and having retired from business, found his mind utterly vacant; by the persuasion of his wife, he was induced to listen to the evangelical preachers, and (as is often the case with converts either in early youth or in advanced life,) in a short time he far outwent his preceptors. Calvinism, Calvinism was every thing with him; his expertness in the five points would have foiled even their redoutable refuter, Dr. Whitby himself; but his theology having obtained full possession of his head, seemed so satisfied with its conquest, that it never ventured to invade his heart.--

To a character thus formed, the abstinence from the vanities of life costs no struggle, and implies no victory over himself, for Calvinism is sufficient to afford him amusement as well as edification; the most enthusiastic playgoer could not await a first night with more eagerness than Wentworth looks forward to an occasion upon which a Socinian, a Catholic, an Arian, and an Arminian Methodist, are to be exposed ‘for the whole night to the battery of a dozen resolute Calvinists.’ In the house of Wentworth the community naturally can feel safe from any disturbing interferences, and it is, in fact, their habitual place of meeting. Among the daily guests is the greatest orator of the sect, a Tartuffian figure called Macowen, who appears to have also a private reason for visiting the family:

He was the son of a poor labourer, the tenant of a wealthy gentleman in Cork, whose wife was evangelical; she instructed the children of her husband’s tenants in her own system; her husband gave her no disturbance; he followed his fox-hounds all day, and damned his wife’s Methodism over his claret all night. The good lady went her own way, and discovering in this lad, maugre his fierce red hair and bare broad feet, evident marks of his being “a growing and a gracious character” -- -- -- -- She proposed a subscription among her friends to enable him to enter the university, and be qualified “to minister at the altar.”

The subscription went on zealously, and young Macowen entered College; but when once there, _his views_, as they were called, expanded so rapidly, that no Church Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Independent, had the good fortune precisely to suit his sentiments in orthodoxy of system, or purity of discipline. Thus he moved a splendid and erratick meteor, shedding his light on the churches as he passed, but defying them all to calculate his orbit, or ascertain his direction. In the mean time, it had been suggested to him that many evangelical females, of large fortune, would not be unwilling to share his fate. This hint, often repeated and readily believed, threw a most odious suavity into his manner; his overblown vulgar courtesy was like the flowers of the poppy, all glare and stench. Under these circumstances, he had become the intimate of the Wentworth family; and from the moment he beheld Eva, his feelings were what he could not describe, and would not account for even to himself, but what he was determined implicitly to follow. His system took part with his inclinations, and in a short time he believed it a duty to impress her with the conviction that her salvation must depend on her being united with him.--

The inmost reason for Mr. Wentworth having suffered so meritorious a wooer to be outrivalled by the unbelieving De Courcy lies in his still being enough of a man of business fully to appreciate the considerable property the latter is heir to. His wife, on the other hand, is really attached to the preserver of her ‘niece.’ She is a woman remarkable for intelligence of mind and dignity of character; and though her manner appears stiff and constrained by the influence of her religion, she is naturally warm-hearted and loves Eva as if she were her own child. She cannot, however, do much to enliven the heavy routine fixed by Wentworth and Macowen, the monotony of which is broken only by scenes like the following. De Courcy and Montgomery call one morning when the gentlemen are sitting at the breakfast-table, engaged in an animated controversy with a new convert:

The muffins had been swallowed wholesale, the eggs scarcely tasted, (though Macowen was a very good judge of eggs), and the tea drank scalding hot, in the rage of debate, and still it raged. Mrs. Wentworth sat at her knitting, at safe distance from the field of battle, and Eva poured out cup after cup in silence. Macowen had been pressing the new convert for a test of his faith; for he had no idea of a man’s having any religion unless he could specify it under a particular denomination, and signify his creed by a kind of free-masonic sign, technical and decisive. This the convert refused, it seems; and as the young men came in, he was bellowing, with a cup of tea in his hand, which he was spilling in the trepidation of his rage,--“No, sir--no, sir--never, never. I will neither be Catholic or Protestant, Arminian or Calvinist.”

“_Don’t put Arminian first_,” said Mr. Wentworth.

He went on.--“Neither Trinitarian or Arian--neither Universalist or Particularist. No sir.--Sir, I will be a Christian.--Yes, I will be a Christian, (foaming with passion). I will--I will be a Christian.” And his voice was actually a roar, and he thumped the table in the fury of his vociferation and the eagerness of his orthodoxy.--

Against this sombre background stand out the characters of the principal personages. Eva, the most pathetic among all the figures of Maturin’s creation, is drawn with a skill almost unparalleled in the art of representing a character in the purest and most ethereal light imaginable, without detracting anything from an unswerving fidelity to nature. She is as real in her goodness as in her timidity and inexperience. She has all the passive loveliness which can possibly flourish in such surroundings as hers, and is completely devoid of every active quality implying any degree of independence of mind. There is nothing brilliant about her, and the range of her ideas is certainly narrow. She would not think of doubting the infallibility of the opinions expressed by Mr. Wentworth or Macowen; but for her own part she instinctively clings to what there is best and noblest in her religion; and what little energy she possesses is employed, not in controversy, but in works of charity among the children of the poor. She is never severe to any one except herself, and shows firmness only in a punctual attention to her own religious duties. With these she unfortunately feels the demands of her temporal bridegroom to be irreconcilable, and though she suffers greatly under the conflict, she cannot find her way out of it. Her attachment to De Courcy is true and deep; but she is, as Scott said, ‘unable to express her passion otherwise than by dying for it.’ A passion of so unsubstantial a description would have put to severe trial the patience of most lovers, let alone that of De Courcy who, at the commencement of the story, is a young man of seventeen, without any self-denying tendencies. The inclination of Maturin to represent his heroes and heroines in their earliest dawn of youth sometimes led to implausibilities, but not in the present case. De Courcy is the most carefully sketched of all his male characters, delineated, in fact, with a subtlety and penetration far in advance of what the fiction of the time usually attained. His chief characteristics are precocity and weakness; constitutional weakness, in spite of a splendid external appearance, and an inconsistency of mind and fickleness of disposition constantly at war with the good and generous qualities which the author, with impartial hand, bestows upon him. The interest of a ‘protector’ with which he regards Eva after their little adventure very soon and very naturally yields to a deeper feeling which, to begin with, knows of no pretensions. On the first occasion of his being invited to the house of Wentworth he is plunged amid an evangelical dinner-party, most capitally described, where he feels but ill at ease, being the only ‘unenlightened’ person present; the gentlemen are sitting apart, ‘on their chairs sublime, in thought more elevate, and reason high’ in terms which he does not even understand--and the ladies are gathered in the drawing-room talking, for the most part, nothing at all; but one look from Eva repays him all his weariness and embarrasment: ‘For months after he fed on that look; it came to him like a beam of light, and he forgot whether it was day or night when it glanced before his eyes.’ Yet the pleasure of feeding on a look sooner or later _will_ be exhausted, and a character like his is not formed to bear disappointments. He is almost broken down both in mind and body when he suspects that he is indifferent to Eva, and when he has learned that this is not so, the incompatibility of their views and habits seems to raise insuperable obstacles between them. Their short hours of confidence are always interrupted in the same way:

One evening he had succeeded in prevailing on her to listen to “The Lay of the Last Minstrel;” she was struck by the introduction, and Charles was proceeding with that increasing confidence which the increasing interest of a listener gives a reader, when the clock struck, and she reminded him it was time to go to the evening lecture at Bethesda Chapel. Charles, with a sigh, threw aside the poem, and accompanied her. The sermon was eloquent and long, the congregation profoundly attentive; Charles sate abstracted and listless. As they returned, the lovely calmness of a vernal night revived the feelings of Charles; and as Eva leaned on his arm, and sometimes raised her looks (but with other feelings than his) to the bright blue spangled sky, that exquisite passage broke involuntarily from his lips, that ends with, “for lovers love the western star.”

Eva started, started with actual terror; she felt the name or language of love like a profanation of the moment, and told him that she was trying to recollect the substance of the sermon she had just heard, and impress it on her memory. Charles was silent; and silently accompanied her home, where nothing but the sermon was spoken of, and every division and subdivision of theological subtlety was run on it to exhaust the hour that must intervene till the bell was rung for the servants to attend the family devotions, and a long extempore prayer from Mr. Wentworth concluded the night.

There is, in the purity and innocence of Eva, something sublime that often makes Charles himself feel it almost a crime to intrude upon her with too vehement declarations of a worldly passion. The result of this is, however, that they never ‘love like lovers,’ and it is shown with much psychological insight how they gradually glide away from each other by reason of an unnatural spiritualization of their mutual relations. Their estrangement is subsequently hastened by the appearance of Zaira, whose society Charles from the first imprudently cultivates. In the person of Zaira critics have been wont to see an expression of the usual ‘extravagance’ of Maturin’s writings. Yet allowing for some casual exaggeration of her great talents, the general characterization stands on a very high level. The figure is not new in Maturin--both Lady Montrevor in _The Wild Irish Boy_ and Armida Fitzalban in _The Milesian Chief_ are studies of this kind; but Zaira is depicted with a moderation and veracity infinitely superior to either. She is none of those distinguished dilettantes that have acquired their accomplishments conveniently in their leisure hours; she is a professional artist and has attained her prominence through hard and unremitting work--work which, as a matter of fact, is the only way to the pinnacles of art. Her character is naturally noble, and she is free from all haughtiness and caprice. Under the bitter sorrow she has sustained, her heart has remained pure and tender, yearning ever for love which she has never met with. In the isolation she has suffered during the greater part of her existence, her mind has been cultivated and her abilities developed at the expense of her experience in practical affairs; she has become curiously unfamiliar with real life and displays, on several occasions, a naiveté almost equal to that of Eva herself. This contrast between her superior intellect and her incapacity of extricating herself from the difficulties of common life is presented with an exquisite skill, and to it she owes the tragedy of her fate. Zaira’s attachment to De Courcy originates, on her part, in a need of tenderness that has nothing to do with passion. The news of the loss of her child throws her into a desolation of mind in which she first receives his enthusiastic admiration with a feeling inspired by the instinct of self-preservation. She says in a letter to her friend:

How often! oh, how often! gazing on his perfect form, have I wished that, if it were possible, such had been the child I lost, such were the child I found! It is impossible, I feel, for the heart long to be vacant. One image filled mine for many years, and the very length and intensity of those feelings created a habit of the heart, which it might have been fatal to my existence, or my reason, not the have indulged.--

From this, indeed, there is but a short step to love, though she is, characteristically enough, herself the last to become aware of it. Knowing that Charles is engaged she tries to persuade herself that what she feels for him is only friendship which can well be extended to her rival; and she succeeds in building up a theory in which she, at the time, firmly believes:

The friendship, which will be the charm of my future existence, will be purified and ennobled by the certainty that the object of it is devoted to another, to whom he will shortly be united; and the security which is enough to satisfy my own heart, I do not hesitate to offer to the world careless whether it will accept or reject it.

But if the world could ever read a heart, the innocence of mine would astonish and convert it. At this moment, my whole pile of future happiness rests on the foundation of theirs--Yes, of _theirs_. To see two beings, equally amiable, _equally beloved_, enriched by my fortune--improved by my talents--and elevated by the distinction which I have not dishonourably attained, would be not only beyond all I have ever enjoyed, (alas! that has been but little hitherto,) but all that I have even conceived. I shall feel like the happy genius, who constructed a palace of gems for the favoured Aladdin and his bride, and then was seen no more.--

Her correspondent, a Frenchwoman of fashion, at once understands the situation; and her letters--which are very cleverly written and present an amusing mixture of frivolity and acute observation--tear down the theory of Zaira and open her eyes to the state of her own feelings. Once acknowledged, these feelings, rapidly grow stronger, and the end, in spite of desperate attempts at bridling her passion, is what has been told.--Neither does Charles leave Eva without a great deal of honest and painful struggling against his new infatuation, though he knows that his strength is not to be relied upon. He is induced to make a final appeal to Eva in a fine scene--: she is frightened by a thunderstorm into a swoon when Charles, supporting her, hears her whisper something about his intention of forsaking her--which she purposely never alludes to. The situation vividly reminds him of their first meeting, and his tenderness for her takes hold of him once more:

“Desert you--never, never--May the lightning strike me first!--Forsake you--never, never--Eva, my beloved--beloved of my soul--Yes, warm your cold cheek on mine; yes, rest your dear, dear head on my bosom; do not let its beatings startle you--Yes, twine your lovely fingers in mine--It is a heart that loves you, yours is prest to; it is a hand that soon will be yours you clasp--Why do your fingers wander so wildly among my hair, my love? one ringlet of yours is worth all that ever--And how often has this hair,” he continued wildly, “been damp with despair? how often has it been torn in anguish, since I knew Zaira?”

Eva revived, and her pure feelings acting instinctively, she started from his arms, and still pale with terror, she tried to falter out an apology for her terrors.

“No,” said De Courcy, pursuing, and kneeling at her feet, “no, you must not fly me. This is a decisive moment--a moment that must end many struggles. Eva, already are you cold, already silent? Is it only in terror and danger you cling to me? Is it only in the terrible intervals of paroxysm and insensibility that I am ever doomed to feel your arms twined round me, to hear your lips utter my name? Already I see your countenance averted from me, the moment it has the power to give a conscious look.”

And so it was; for Eva, trembling at the recollection that her arms had been thrown round him, sat abashed and confounded.

“Eva, I call on you passionately, solemnly. This is the crisis of both our destinies. Speak--tell me that you love--love me as I wish, as I demand to be loved. Bind me to you by an irresistible confession--make me yours for ever. One word, one penetrating word of fire. One word of the language of the heart. Utter it, and bless me.”

Eva, struggling between her timidity and her passion, tried to comply with, his wishes. She searched her feelings, for something that might correspond with his. It was in vain; her pure heart had not one image that reflected the ardour of his. Her lip knew no language that could answer him. Distressed and perplexed, she sat with distress and perplexity increasing, anxious to give him some proof of her sincerity, but unable to give one that would satisfy him.

“Eva, speak, do you love me?”

“Have I not said so?”

“Oh! when we love, it is so easy to pour out the proofs with an overflowing sensibility; the heart luxuriates in those proofs of its being deeply touched; it is oppressed by its own fullness, and delights to communicate what it cannot bear undivided. If you loved, Eva, love itself would inspire you with involuntary testimonies; your very silence would be eloquence, nor would I have to kneel at your feet for a word in vain.”

“What can I say?” said Eva, his doubts becoming too strong for her fears; “is passion to be mistrusted, because its power renders, us speechless?” And trembling at her own temerity in uttering these words, she became silent.

Was De Courcy satisfied with this declaration? We know not; for it is certain that there is an exaggerated sensibility, a sensibility that doubts its own truth, and is better satisfied with words than with things. It requires to be paid in its own coin, and would rather hear a florid sentiment than accept of the most perfect sacrifice.

This interview is indeed decisive: it is the last time the passion, of De Courcy flames up in the presence of Eva. When the hour of Zaira’s departure draws nigh he renounces ‘all engagements, all ties, and all objects’--and obtains her permission to accompany her. He has already sent a note to Eva begging her to forgive him if she can, in answer to which note he receives a long letter, said by a critic[105] to be ‘for feeling, for eloquence, for heart-touching resignation, and impassioned grief, almost unique in the language.’ The writing of this letter is made easy to her by the presentiment that she will not overlive his desertion of her; and her resignation is so free from all factitious generosity and all ostentatious self-sacrifice, that the beatings of a human heart are, as it were, audible through the lines.--

In connection with Zaira’s stay in Ireland a few glimpses are given of the higher society of Dublin, which, no doubt, also ‘bear some resemblance to common life.’ Maturin was, by this time, familiar with all the circles the town could boast of, and the drawing-room does not escape a fling of his good-natured satire any more than the conventicle. De Courcy is introduced to Zaira at a large evening party, given in her honour by a Lady Longwood, the wife of one of his guardians. The bustle excited by the presence of Zaira; the idle expectations of a more substantial refreshment, entertained by ‘mammas and misses’ who have been talking themselves hungry in her praise; Lady Longwood moving among her guests canvassing applauses for the indifferent musical performances of her silly daughters, before the eyes of the greatest artist in Europe: all is described with a humour and a vivacity that makes one regret that Maturin so seldom, in his writings, gave vent to those high spirits by which he was distinguished in private life. One of the finest chapters in this part of the book is further the one containing an account of Eva’s visit to the theatre. She is enough of a woman to feel an irresistible desire of seeing her famous rival, but would never dare to speak about it to her foster-parents. Going out, however, she one day accidentally meets Lady Longwood and her daughters, with whom she is slightly acquainted, and, summoning up all her courage, accepts their invitation to accompany them to witness Zaira’s last appearance on the stage. Her confusion at the theatre where everything is new to her, the overwhelming impression produced upon her by the brilliant apparition of Zaira, and her anguish when she observes De Courcy behind the scenes are analysed with a dramatic force and a marvellous penetration into the innocent soul-life of Eva. Less interesting, from an artistic point of view, are the scenes taking place at the house of Zaira, chiefly filled with literary discussions. A well-sketched personage, however, present on most of these occasions, is De Courcy’s friend Montgomery: a blunt and honest character who sees with unselfish grief that his friend is beginning to neglect Eva, and who tries to bring him back to the way of duty by the not very chivalrous means of endeavouring to detect and point out immoral or blameworthy tendencies in the views and principles of Zaira. To this end he obstinately contradicts her where he can, and once, weary of hearing Zaira’s taste called ‘classical,’ he makes a furious attack upon the entire classical literature, falling upon the ancients ‘with redoutable, repeated blows, slaying them, like Sampson, by thousands.’ These doubts as to the excellence of one of the corner-stones of English education roused the wrath of the critics of _Women_, who, naturally enough, felt irritated at being told that in their own days Horace would have been hanged and Juvenal stood in the pillory. The method of ascribing to the author the opinions of his personages, always applied with vigour in the case of the Rev. Mr. Maturin, came here, for once, pretty near the truth. It is not only in _Women_ that he displays a hostility to classical studies; in one of his sermons he speaks of them with a marked and candid antipathy:

I will say it is the black and crying sin of civilized Europe, to compel their children to familiarize their young imaginations with the most brutal crimes, and force their most unripened passions, by placing them in a hot-bed of unutterable impurity. This we do--this we have done for centuries--and this we shall answer for in eternity. Let me propose one plain question to the admirers of the classic writers, as they are called: If a father finds his son reading such passages as occur in their books in his own language, would he not fling the vile pages into the flames, and scarce think those flames too bad for the author?

As Maturin himself had been, for a long time, occupied in giving instruction in this same branch of learning, he knew very well that the copies of the ancients committed into the hands of British school-boys were carefully pruned of the passages he took such offence at; and his eccentric inveighings against the classical writers expressed, after all, his artistic temperament rather than any zeal for morality. His literary tastes were eminently romantic, notwithstanding his admiration for Pope. He had accepted the revival of Mediaevalism in all its phases; his own work began under the auspices of Mrs. Radcliffe and ended with an imitation of Walter Scott; and his works possess every quality generally termed romantic. But Maturin’s _Women_ affords, at the same time, a striking proof of the fact that the romantic writers could occasionally greatly excel in realism, though the spirit of classicism was to them foreign and indeed odious.--

The fancy of Zaira to devote a year before her intended marriage to De Courcy to an ‘intellectual existence’ during which she is to finish his education, is as consistent with her ideal and theoretical cast of mind as it is inconsistent with anything like common prudence. Paris is, moreover, the most unfortunate place she could choose for the commencement of her task; in the most brilliant society of Europe not even Zaira can make so unique a figure as in Dublin, and to the fluctuating mind of De Courcy the gay metropolis has a thousand things to offer, calculated to attract him more than the conversation of Zaira. Among these is a person called Eulalie de Touranges--otherwise unimportant, but just giving him the pleasure of a transitory flirtation, new to his experience, and irresistible at his age. Thus the relation between the lovers very soon becomes constrained in a way appropriately described in a letter of one of Zaira’s friends:

Yesterday I met them at a party at our friend ----’s. The circle was brilliant, and Zaira was unusually eloquent in literature. At the end of a striking sentence which had called forth loud applauses from her auditors, she looked round with a flush of triumph in her lovely countenance for De Courcy. She saw him engaged, not in conversation, but in delighted listening attention to the beautiful Eulalie de Touranges. He was bending over her chair in silence. I marked the change in her countenance, in her voice; the subsiding of her whole figure; the gloomy vacancy of disappointment in her expression. Her hearers did not notice it; they pressed her with some new remarks. She attempted to answer, but evidently did not understand them; struggled to recover her composure, and went on, obviously not knowing of what she was speaking. Music was proposed soon after; and apparently determined to force De Courcy to feel an interest in what she was undertaking, she asked him what she should sing. He appeared not pleased at the publicity which this application gave him, and returned some slight answer, referring her to her own choice. She sat down. I could hear her sigh. She turned languidly over the leaves of her music-book, and sung an air _sotto voce_ with a tone, a look, a manner unlike--oh, how unlike Zaira! At the close of the air, she turned her head almost imperceptibly, and saw De Courcy arranging the men on a chess-board with Mademoiselle de Touranges. The last notes of the air were nearly unintelligible.--

The episode with Eulalie de Touranges is not the only circumstance contributing to the alienation between De Courcy and Zaira. The very basis of their friendship is unnatural. No man, as Maturin simply remarks, is pleased to be the pupil of a woman, and to be continually reminded of the superiority of Zaira cannot fail to become irritating to De Courcy. His _liaison_ to an actress is, moreover, often misconstrued in a way that is very disagreeable to him; but, weak as he is, instead of resolutely defending her honour, he only wishes to get rid of her. Once he is told that Zaira has been married and even had a child, the fate of whom is entirely unknown. His love to her being already on the decline, he feels, and not quite without reason, greatly incensed at her having never mentioned this to him. The innocent figure of Eva begins to reappear to his mind, and when he hears from Montgomery that Eva is lying dangerously ill, his sensitive nature is utterly shocked at the thought of his being the cause of her death. Nothing can now detain him at Paris. The development of these incidents is traced with an inner logic that makes De Courcy’s return to Ireland appear not only natural but inevitable, and forces the reader at once to accept the argumentation. Scott, indeed, says in his critique on _Women_ that De Courcy’s desertion of Zaira is not ‘half so probably motived as his first offence against the code of constancy;’ but his judgment proceeds, no doubt, from an honest indignation at a hero so lamentably deficient in what had always been considered as the principal qualification of one, fidelity in love: summing up the characteristics of De Courcy, the author of _Waverley_ concludes by wishing him to the devil. Yet De Courcy, although the ‘hero’ of an extensive novel, is meant to be neither admired nor hated, only understood, and the characterization is executed with a realism which the time was not quite able to appreciate.--As for Zaira, she knows nothing of the art of keeping the interest of a lover alive by occasionally exercising some reserve towards him; it is impossible for her not to show clearly that he is all she lives for, and this deep and serious view of their relation would, even in itself, inspire a kind of awe in the fickle-minded De Courcy. Now the passion of Zaira is heightened according as that of De Courcy cools down; she is seized with that eccentric, all-absorbing infatuation which persons of genius sometimes conceive for objects wholly unworthy of it. Having been kept, for a time, painfully hovering between hope and despair, she is at last relieved from all doubts. It happens in rather a hackneyed way: she gets hold of a bit of paper on which De Courcy has begun to compose an answer to his guardian who has written to him and implored him to come back, and Zaira makes out the words: ‘I am weary, sick to the soul of my present situation; I shall fly from it as soon as possible.’ The lack of originality, however, is easily forgotten in the almost appalling power with which the sufferings of Zaira are described, sufferings that gradually deprive her of her talents and her health, of everything but life. Of pride she has never had much; now she loses every trace of it. Although aware that she is wearying him, she is still anxious to appear in his company, and when he actually begins to shun her, she even follows him in the street, and stealing to his hotel, at last sees him depart. But for the tender care which some of her French friends take of her, Zaira would perish; to restore her to her former vigour, however, is not in human power. She cannot find peace in any of her old pursuits, nothing can divert her mind from the calamity that has befallen her. At this time she is thrown into the society of an atheistic philosopher who, in support of his theories, endeavours to prove to her that misery is, and must be, the lot of all intellectual beings. Their conversations on this subject unquestionably belong to the _longueurs_ of the book; as the adoption of his sceptical views would not, in her present state of mind, be of any solace to Zaira, the discourses are unnecessarily protracted, and her escape from the ‘snares’ of the philosopher does not appear so meritorious as is probably intended. But all the more impressively are described Zaira’s attempts at turning to religion, seeking consolation in a living faith. Her friends have taken her to a beautiful villa in the country, where she has a singular experience while roaming about in a summer night:

-- -- -- The garden, with its placid regular beauty, tortured her by its contrast to the agitation of her soul. A gate, at the extremity of it, opened into a wood; she hurried into the wood, its darkness was as light unto her, it seemed as a shelter from her own thoughts, and she fled to it with avidity. Nature, in all its rich and exhaustless luxuriance, has nothing to the eye or to the soul so delicious as the mild splendour of moonlight, shed over the darkness of a forest. There is darkness beneath for the unhappy to muse--there is light above for the happy to gaze on--and the trembling gleams between the branches give a strong image of life, chequered indeed with fitful and precarious lustre, but of which the predominant image is gloom--diversified, but essential.

Zaira wandered on; the beauty of the night, the mildness of the climate, precluded all apprehension from her wandering at this late hour. She found herself in a part of the wood where the thick-mingling branches excluded all light, but a tremulous and chequered gleam, that appeared and disappeared among the foliage above, as it was agitated slightly by the breeze. Suddenly a figure appeared to her in the darkness; a white figure, as large as life. She started at first, but a moment after approached it; just where it seemed to stand, the trees opened a little, and the moonlight fell strongly on it, producing a remarkable and solemn effect. It was a figure of Christ on the cross, which had been taken from a ruined church in the neighbourhood, and placed there by the peasantry. It was of wood, but it was well executed, and the light that fell on it at once concealed its defects, and magnified its expression. What an object for a mind in the state of Zaira’s!--Accident, that had so often presented her with the most terrible omens, seemed in this to seek to make atonement. The image of the Saviour of the world hanging on the cross a sacrifice for mankind, surrounded by darkness, and concentrating and reflecting the light solely from his own figure, was an intuitive symbol of relief. She approached it, as she would the presence of a friend. The pale and dying countenance, the woe-bent head, the outspread arms, seemed to unite the expression of suffering and protection--singular but intelligible combination. None can pity but those who have suffered. “He that suffered, being tempted, is able to succour those that are tempted.”

As Zaira gazed on this figure, it seemed to live, to speak to her. Texts of scripture rushed on her heart, as if whispered to it by the Deity. She appeared to hear these sounds issuing audibly from the lifeless lips of the figure--“Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” She obeyed the call thus echoed from the bottom of her heart; she prostrated herself before the cross. Her spirit was bowed down along with her body, as she exclaimed, “Oh, my God! accept a heart that has wandered, but longs to return to its Saviour. Purify it, regenerate it, fill it with the love of you alone. Had it known no other but yours, it had never been almost broken. Let your Spirit descend on it, and aid me to struggle with that image, for which all its pulses have beat, which has been wrapt in its very core. You alone are worthy of that place, which a mortal has too long usurped. Vindicate it for yourself, and set me free. Deliver me into the glorious liberty of the children of God, unconscious of any presence, incapable of admitting any image, but yours; dead to the world, and absorbed in God alone.”

But though she uttered these words, it seemed as if some inner winding of her treacherous heart was disclosed to her, where the image of Charles rested, and defied the power even of heaven to displace him. It seemed to her as if she dreaded lest her own prayers should be heard; and that if the Deity had that moment offered to efface that image for ever from her soul, to make it as the image of one she had never seen or seen always with indifference, she would have shrunk from the offer, and implored any other infliction at his hands.--

The religious inspiration Zaira has thus felt for a moment does not return, although she passes the greater part of the night before the Crucifix, where she is, in the morning, found insensible. All her devotional exercises are in vain; for as she cannot find peace in the spirit of religion, her efforts to embrace its empty forms are also doomed to fail. She makes some arrangements to enter a convent, but is deterred from it after a conversation she holds with an old nun, a resident of the place. The results of an existence that leads to apathy and stupefaction, that deadens every feeling and makes living automata of human beings, are displayed in the person of the nun with all the force expressing Maturin’s innate horror at a life in monotony--and Zaira abandons her intention with a strong conviction that she could not buy the salvation of her soul at the price of killing it first. The convent was, indeed, the usual refuge of fictitious characters in great distress; in _The Heart of Midlothian_ which appeared in the same year as _Women_, Lady Staunton--the ‘Zaira’ of that great novel--ends in a continental convent practising all the vigils and austerities of the religion, and is then heard of no more. Yet it would have been a too convenient way of quenching the fire by which Zaira is consumed, and breaking off the psychological process she is undergoing, to shut her within the walls of a convent. The author pursues with unfaltering consistency the restless strivings of her powerful mind after forgetfulness which she both wishes and dreads. Perceiving that her aim cannot be reached in solitude, she engages in acts of private charity, visiting the poor and sick until she is tired out. Satisfaction, however, is denied her; it is boldly shown that a person, however good and noble, cannot perforce make herself religious, and that there are circumstances under which that remedy fails, without any fault of the patient’s. Weary to the soul, she at last decides to put an end to her life. In all her vicissitudes, it must be observed, her nature has remained unchanged, and with the most terrible reality before her eyes she still lives half in a world of theories. She discusses the subject of suicide with her friends, and passes some painful nights in reading accounts of the deaths of Brutus and Cato.[106] Yet at the decisive moment her reason wanders; dream and reality are blended; magnificent visions chase each other through her delirious brain, and on recovering she clearly remembers having seen a white figure whom she imagines to be the Irish girl, once forsaken for her. This figure continues to haunt her mind, and as it is something she can concentrate her thoughts upon, it soon becomes an _idée fixe_ with her. Weak and exhausted as she is, she travels to Dublin. From a morbid inclination as much as for philanthropical reasons she keeps on visiting the filthiest streets and most miserable hovels, in one of which, as has been related, she finds her wretched mother.--

To this part of the book, above all others, must be applied what Alaric Watts wrote in 1819: ‘“Women” is a work which, with all its dullness, its monotony of suffering, and its _horrible anatomy_ of the _moral frame_, stands alone among modern writings--there is nothing like it--its profound and philosophic melancholy, its terrible researches into the deepest abysses of the human heart, and of human feeling--its daring _drawing the veil_ of the “holy of holies,” while the hand that draws it trembles at the touch, make it a work unequalled in the list of English novels.’ This sentence was justified; _Women_ stood alone among contemporary writings. The tendency pointed out by Watts is one which, according to a modern writer,[107] indicates the latest phase in the development of the novel: ‘Yet I think he is but a superficial student of the literature of recorded time who does not note one tendency of later work, of later method, of later procedure, of later life, as compared with earlier work, earlier method, earlier procedure, and earlier life, which seems to imply an underlying law. -- -- -- This law of tendency is, in general, that the depiction of the external, objective, carnal, precedes, in every form of expression of which we can have records, the consideration of the internal, the subjective, the spiritual. We go from shapes, and forms, and bulk, and externals, to the presentation of the life within.’ Now the growth of the ‘novel of personality’ towards a closer representation of the ‘life within’ does not show any remarkable progress during the second decade of the century which, on the contrary, is marked by the rapid rise of the historical novel. It is no wonder that the depth and intensity with which the inner life is depicted in Maturin’s _Women_, should make a powerful impression upon thoughtful minds, though on the part of the larger public the book met with the usual fate of a work in advance of its time.--

While Zaira is well-nigh breaking down under the inconstancy of De Courcy, her daughter is, in Dublin, pining away from the same cause. In the Wentworth family things are going on in the same old style, Eva only is able to take less and less part in the usual proceedings. The symptoms of her disease manifest themselves in a general weakness, alarmingly increasing. Physicians are duly consulted--sea-air is recommended by one, mountain-air by another. Eva submits to all with a passive smile; she has not the least doubt that she is hastening to her grave. Soon, indeed, this becomes evident to the rest of the family, and Wentworth already plans what evangelical institutions might be supported by the fortune which will probably fall to him after Eva’s death, that is, the capital settled on her by her grandfather. A little incident exposing, in a masterly way, the inmost characters of the principal members of the circle, is related in connection with a meeting where Macowen is requested to give a ‘word of prayer.’ This gentleman, who also has been thwarted in love, deems this a suitable opportunity of taking his revenge, and exercises his eloquence entirely at the expense of Eva:

--he implored the mercy of Heaven for a wanderer who had strayed from the fold; for one “who had forsaken the guide of her youth, and forgotten the Covenant of her God; who had loved strangers, and after them would go.” And as he went on, aided by the sympathising murmur of the audience, his memory supplying him with images, and his passions with eloquence, there was not a single metaphor in the Old Testament descriptive of the apostacy of the Jews from their God, that he did not apply to Eva, who, compelled to kneel out this martyrdom, wished to sink into the earth to escape it. This cruel holding her up as an object to a numerous circle, was the most painful trial she had yet experienced. Wentworth thought it excellent, and expressed much hope from the strivings of that godly man in her behalf. Mrs. Wentworth thought very differently; her feelings were so much outraged, she could hardly remain on her knees; and when her husband soon after proposed Macowen to be of a party that was to meet at their house, Mrs. Wentworth strenuously declared, “He should not come into their city, nor _shoot an arrow_ there.” And Wentworth was not displeased with her opposition to his wishes, because it was couched in the language of Isaiah, whom Macowen had taught him to call the fifth evangelist.

One evening as Eva is sitting in her garden, De Courcy appears before her; she swoons in his arms and, from that moment, does not leave her bed. He besieges Mrs. Wentworth with letters and supplications, but is no more admitted to Eva, whose only wish is to die in peace. It is not without much exertion of her feeble strength that she succeeds in repelling the image of her lover from her thoughts and fixing them on religion alone, yet at length she attains the tranquillity which Zaira had sought in vain, and her last moments are undisturbed by any earthly memories. The pitiable state into which De Courcy is reduced is spoken of in a tone evincing the author’s latent sympathy for him, but he forbears to give any detailed relation of the end of his hero: a character like De Courcy is interesting only in hours of happiness and enthusiasm. And as a crowning touch of the knowledge of the conditions of human nature displayed in Maturin’s _Women_ must be mentioned the circumstance that Zaira remains alive. She is strong, having never been accustomed to self-indulgence. At an age when Eva and Charles knew no external compulsion, but were free to follow the dictates of their feelings, Zaira was placed face to face with real life in its sternest aspect, and the strenuous work into which she was driven, has, while she has had strength to go through it at all, hardened her vitality so that death touches her not when it would be most welcome. She lives on in the painful consciousness of having caused the death of her child, unknown and unnoticed. The book ends with this melancholy aphorism:

When great talents are combined with calamity, their union forms the _tenth wave_ of human suffering--grief becomes inexhaustible from the unhappy fertility of genius, and the serpents that devour us, are generated out of our own vitals.

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