Chapter V: Part 5

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.