Chapter VI: Part 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE WOMAN’S MAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PERSONALITIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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