The title naturally suggested for this story was “A Dead Soul,” but it
was discarded because of the similarity to that of the famous novel by
Nikolai Gogol--“Dead Souls”--though the motive has nothing in common
with that used by the Russian novelist. Gogol exposed an extensive fraud
practiced by the sale, in connection with lands, of the names of “serfs”
(called souls) not living, or “dead souls.”
This story is an attempt to trace the demoralization in a woman's soul
of certain well-known influences in our existing social life. In no
other way could certain phases of our society be made to appear so
distinctly as when reflected in the once pure mirror of a woman's soul.
The character of Margaret is the portrait of no one woman. But it was
suggested by the career of two women (among others less marked) who had
begun life with the highest ideals, which had been gradually eaten
away and destroyed by “prosperous” marriages and association with
unscrupulous methods of acquiring money.
The deterioration was gradual. The women were in all outward conduct
unchanged, the conventionalities of life were maintained, the graces
were not lost, the observances of the duties of charities and of
religion were even emphasized, but worldliness had eaten the heart out
of them, and they were “dead souls.” The tragedy of the withered
life was a thousand-fold enhanced by the external show of prosperous
respectability.
The story was first published (in 1888) in Harper's Monthly. During its
progress--and it was printed as soon as each installment was ready (a
very poor plan)--I was in receipt of the usual letters of sympathy,
or protest, and advice. One sympathetic missive urged the removal
of Margaret to a neighboring city, where she could be saved by being
brought under special Christian influences. The transfer, even in a
serial, was impossible, and she by her own choice lived the life she had
entered upon.
And yet, if the reader will pardon the confidence, pity intervened to
shorten it. I do not know how it is with other writers, but the persons
that come about me in a little drama are as real as those I meet in
every-day life, and in this case I found it utterly impossible to go on
to what might have been the bitter, logical development of Margaret's
career. Perhaps it was as well. Perhaps the writer should have no
despotic power over his creations, however slight they are. He may
profitably recall the dictum of a recent essayist that “there is no
limit to the mercy of God.”