her attention to what is good and bad in fiction-writing, and had given
expression to her own theory of the novel. What she wrote on this subject
is excellent in itself, but it now has an additional interest in view of
her success as a novelist, and as throwing light on her conception of the
purposes to be followed in the writing of fiction. In what she wrote on
this subject two ideas stand out distinctly, that women are to find in
novel-writing a literary field peculiarly adapted to their capacities, and
that the novel should be a true portraiture of life.
She was a zealous advocate of woman's capacity to excel as a novelist, and
she saw in this form of literature a field especially adapted to her
greater powers of emotion and sympathy. Very generous and appreciative are
her references to the lady novelists whom she defends, the excellence of
whose work she maintains entitles them to the highest places as literary
artists. In the article on "Lady Novelists" she has drawn attention both to
those qualities in which woman may excel and to those in which she may
fail. In writing later of "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" she criticised
unsparingly those women who write novels without comprehending life or any
of its problems, and who write in a merely artificial manner. The width of
her own culture, the vigor of her critical talent, the largeness of her
conception of life and its interests, are well expressed in these essays.
Only a large mind could have so truly conceived the real nature of woman's
relations to literature, and expressed them in a spirit so intelligent and
comprehensive. She would have the whole of life portrayed, and she believes
only a woman can truly speak for women. But her faith in woman seems not to
have been of the revolutionary character. She rather preferred that women
should achieve a higher social condition by deeds than by words. A great
intellectual career like her own, which places a woman in the front rank of
literary creators, does more to elevate the position of women than any
amount of agitation in favor of suffrage. That she sought for the highest
intellectual achievement, and that she labored to attain the widest results
of scholarship, is greatly to her credit; but more to her credit is it,
that she made no claim upon the public as a woman, but only as a literary
artist. She asked that her work should be judged on its literary merits, as
the product of intellect, and not with reference to her sex. While
believing that woman can do her work best by being true to the instincts,
sympathies and capacities of her sex, yet she would have the same standard
of literary judgment applied to women as to men. Its truthfulness, its
reality, its power to widen our sympathies and enlarge our culture, its
measure of genius and moral power, is the true test to be applied to any
literary work. Such being her conception of the manner in which women
should be judged when becoming literary creators, she had no excuses to
offer for those who make use of prejudices and a false culture in their own
behalf. She says that
The most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form,
because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the solid
education of women.
That she believed in the solid education of women is apparent in her own
efforts towards obtaining it for herself, and her conception of what is to
be done with it was large and generous. Mere learning she did not hold to
be an adornment in a woman. The culture must be transmuted into life-power,
and be poured forth, not as oracular wisdom in silly novels, but as
sympathy and enlarged comprehension of the daily duties of life. When
educated women "mistake vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and
affectation for originality," she is not surprised that men regard
rhodomontade as the native accent of woman's intellect, or that they come
to the conclusion that "the average nature of women is too shallow and
feeble a soil to bear much tillage."
It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such very
superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in
the world; but we have not now to contest their opinion--we are only
pointing out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who have
volunteered themselves as representatives of the feminine intellect. We
do not believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by
associating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had absorbed her
knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A really cultured woman,
like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive
for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in
something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from
which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and
things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right
estimate of herself.... She does not write books to confound
philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that delight
them, in conversation she is the least formidable of women, because she
understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you _can't_
understand her. She does not give you information, which is the raw
material of culture,--she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest
essence.
After this estimate of the value of culture to women, it is interesting to
turn to George Eliot's words concerning the legitimate work which women can
perform in literature. What she says on this subject shows that she not
only had culture, but also the wisdom which is its highest result. She saw
that while a woman is to ask for no leniency towards her work because she
is a woman, yet that she is not to imitate men or to ignore her sex. She is
to portray life as a woman sees it, with a woman's sympathies and
experiences. To interpret the feminine side of life is her legitimate
province as a literary artist.
If we regard literature as the expression of the emotions, the whims,
the caprices, the enthusiasms, the fluctuating idealisms which move
each epoch, we shall not be far wrong; and inasmuch as women
necessarily take part in these things, they ought to give them _their_
expression. And this leads us to the heart of the question, what does
the literature of women mean? It means this: while it is impossible for
men to express life otherwise than as they know it--and they can only
know it profoundly according to their own experience--the advent of
female literature promises woman's view of life, woman's experience; in
other words, a new element. Make what distinctions you please in the
social world, it still remains true that men and women have different
organizations, consequently different experiences. To know life you
must have both sides depicted. Let him paint what he knows. And if you
limit woman's sphere to the domestic circle, you must still recognize
the concurrent necessity of domestic life finding its homeliest and
truest expression in the woman who lives it.
Keeping to the abstract heights we have chosen, too abstract and
general to be affected by exceptions, we may further say that the
masculine mind is characterized by the predominance of the intellect,
and the feminine by the predominance of the emotions. According to this
rough division, the regions of philosophy would be assigned to men,
those of literature to women. We need scarcely warn the reader against
too rigorous an interpretation of this statement, which is purposely
exaggerated the better to serve as a signpost. It is quite true that no
such absolute distinction will be found in authorship. There is no man
whose mind is shrivelled up into pure intellect; there is no woman
whose intellect is completely absorbed by her emotions. But in most men
the intellect does not move in such inseparable alliance with the
emotions as in most women, and hence, although often not so great as in
women, yet the intellect is more commonly dominant. In poets, artists,
and men of letters, _par excellence_, we observe this feminine trait,
that their intellect habitually moves in alliance with their emotions;
and one of the best descriptions of poetry was that given by Professor
Wilson, as the "intellect colored by the feelings."
Woman, by her greater affectionateness, her greater range and depth
of emotional experience, is well fitted to give expression to
the emotional facts of life, and demands a place in literature
corresponding to that she occupies in society; and that literature
must be greatly benefited thereby, follows from the definition we have
given of literature.
But hitherto, in spite of illustrations, the literature of woman has
fallen short of its function, owing to a very natural and a very
explicable weakness--it has been too much a literature of imitation. To
write as men write, is the aim and besetting sin of women; to write as
women, is the real office they have to perform. Our definition of
literature includes this necessity. If writers are bound to express
what they have really known, felt and suffered, that very obligation
imperiously declares they shall not quit their own point of view for
the point of view of others. To imitate is to abdicate. We are in no
need of more male writers; we are in need of genuine female experience.
The prejudices, notions, passions and conventionalisms of men are amply
illustrated; let us have the same fulness with respect to women.
Unhappily the literature of women may be compared with that of Rome: no
amount of graceful talent can disguise the internal defect. Virgil,
Ovid and Catullus were assuredly gifted with delicate and poetic
sensibility; but their light is, after all, the light of moons
reflected from the Grecian suns, and such as brings little life with
its rays, To speak in Greek, to think in Greek, was the ambition of all
cultivated Romans, who could not see that it would be a grander thing
to utter their pure Roman natures in sincere originality. So of women.
The throne of intellect has so long been occupied by men, that women
naturally deem themselves bound to attend the court. Greece domineered
over Rome; its intellectual supremacy was recognized, and the only way
of rivalling it seemed to be imitation. Yet not so did Rome vanquish
Pyrrhus and his elephants; not by employing elephants to match his, but
by Roman valor.
Of all departments of literature, fiction is the one to which, by
nature and by circumstance, women are best adapted. Exceptional women
will of course be found competent to the highest success in other
departments; but speaking generally, novels are their forte. The
domestic experiences which form the bulk of woman's knowledge finds an
appropriate form in novels; while the very nature of fiction calls for
that predominance of sentiment which we have already attributed to the
feminine mind. Love is the staple of fiction, for it "forms the story
of a woman's life." The joys and sorrows of affection, the incidents of
domestic life, the aspirations and fluctuations of emotional life,
assume typical forms in the novel. Hence we may be prepared to find
women succeeding better in _finesse_ of detail, in pathos and
sentiment, while men generally succeed better in the construction of
plots and the delineation of character. Such a novel as _Tom Jones_ or
_Vanity Fair_ we shall not get from a woman, nor such an effort of
imaginative history as _Ivanhoe_ or _Old Mortality_; but Fielding,
Thackeray and Scott are equally excluded from such perfection in its
kind as _Pride and Prejudice_, _Indiana_ or _Jane Eyre_. As an artist
Jane Austen surpasses all the male novelists that ever lived; and for
eloquence and depth of feeling no man approaches George Sand.
We are here led to another curious point in our subject, viz., the
influence of sorrow upon female literature. It may be said without
exaggeration that almost all literature has some remote connection with
suffering. "Speculation," said Novalis, "is disease." It certainly
springs from a vague disquiet. Poetry is analogous to the pearl which
the oyster secretes in its malady.
"Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong,
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."
What Shelley says of poets, applies with greater force to women. If
they turn their thoughts to literature, it is--when not purely an
imitative act--always to solace by some intellectual activity the
sorrow that in silence wastes their lives, and by a withdrawal of the
intellect from the contemplation of their pain, or by a transmutation
of their secret anxieties into types, they escape from the pressure of
that burden. If the accidents of her position make her solitary and
inactive, or if her thwarted affections shut her somewhat from that
sweet domestic and maternal sphere to which her whole being
spontaneously moves, she turns to literature as to another sphere. We
do not here simply refer to those notorious cases where literature was
taken up with the avowed and conscious purpose of withdrawing thoughts
from painful subjects; but to the unconscious, unavowed influence of
domestic disquiet and unfulfilled expectations, in determining the
sufferer to intellectual activity. The happy wife and busy mother are
only forced into literature by some hereditary organic tendency,
stronger even than the domestic; and hence it is that the cleverest
women are not those who have written books.
In the later essay on "Silly Novels" her powers of sarcasm were fully
displayed. It showed keen critical powers, and a clear insight into the
defects inherent in most novel-writing. She spared no faults, had no mercy
for presumption, and condemned unsparingly the pretence of culture.
She described four kinds of silly novels, classing them as being of the
_mind-and-millinery_, the _oracular, the _white-neck-cloth_, and the
_modern-antique_ varieties. All her powers of analysis and insight shown
in her novels appeared in this article.
Severe as her criticism is, it is always just. It aims at the presentation
of a truer conception of the purpose of novel-writing, and women are
judged simply as literary workers. This criticism is based on the clearest
apprehension of why it is that women fail as novel-writers; that it is not
because they are women, but because they are false to nature and to the
simplest conditions of literary art. These women write poor novels because
they aim at fine writing, and believe they must be learned and
grandiloquent. They ignore what they see about them every day, and which,
if they were to describe it in simple language, would give them real power.
It is this falsity in thought, method and purpose which is so severely
condemned. And it is the very justness of the criticism which makes it
severe, which gives to a true description of these novels the nature of a
stinging sarcasm. That these women are praised by the critics she justly
regards as a sure indication of their incapacity, or a sign of man's
chivalry towards the other sex, which does not permit him to speak the
truth about what he knows to be so false and immature. She also sees that
what women need is to be told the truth, and to be compelled to accept the
just consequences of their work,
The standing apology for women who become writers without any special
qualification is, that society shuts them out from other spheres of
occupation. Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for
the manufacture of many unwholesome commodities, from bad pickles to
bad poetry. But society, like "matter" and her Majesty's Government,
and other lofty abstractions, has its share of excessive blame as
well as excessive praise. Where there is one woman who writes from
necessity, we believe there are three who write from vanity; and
besides, there is something so antiseptic in the mere healthy fact
of working for one's bread, that the most trashy and rotten kind
of literature is not likely to have been produced under such
circumstances. "In all labor there is profit;" but ladies' silly
novels, we imagine, are less the result of labor than of busy idleness.
Happily we are not dependent on argument to prove that fiction is a
department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully
equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush to our
memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only fine, but
among the very finest;--novels, too, that have a precious specialty,
lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No
educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of
fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid
requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form and yet
be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements--genuine
observation, humor and passion. But it is precisely this absence
of rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of
novel-writing to incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very
grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here
certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and
incompetence inevitably breaks down. Every art which has its absolute
_technique_ is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of
mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers
for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a
writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have
again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his nose
to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi,
aussi, je joue de la flute;"--a fable which we commend, at parting, to
the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to
the number of "silly novels by lady novelists."
Her praise of the great novelists is as enthusiastic as her condemnation of
the silly ones is severe. It is interesting to note that in the first of
these papers she selects Jane Austen and George Sand as the chiefest among
women novelists, and that she praises them for the truthfulness of their
portraitures of life, nor is she any the less aware of the defects of these
masters than of the deficiencies of silly women who write novels. She finds
that Jane Austen never penetrates into the deeper spiritual experiences of
life, and that George Sand lacks in that moral poise and purity which is so
necessary to the finest literary effort. Her sketches of these women are as
truthful as they are interesting.
First and foremost let Jane Austen be named, the greatest artist that
has ever written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery
over the means to her end. There are heights and depths in human nature
Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of
passionate existence into which she has never set foot; but although
this is obvious to every reader, it is equally obvious that she has
risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she has not
seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a
perfect orb and vital. Life, as it appears to an English gentlewoman
peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in
her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest
for all time. To read one of her books is like an actual experience of
life; you know the people as if you had lived with them, and you feel
something of personal affection towards them. The marvellous reality
and subtle distinctive traits noticeable in her portraits has led
Macaulay to call her a prose Shakspere. If the whole force of the
distinction which lies in that epithet _prose_ be fairly appreciated,
no one, we think, will dispute the compliment; for out of Shakspere it
would be difficult to find characters so typical yet so nicely
demarcated within the limits of their kind. We do not find such
profound psychological insight as may be found in George Sand (not to
mention male writers), but taking the type to which the characters
belong, we see the most intimate and accurate knowledge in all Miss
Austen's creations.
Only cultivated minds fairly appreciate the exquisite art of Miss
Austen. Those who demand the stimulus of effects, those who can only
see by strong lights and shadows, will find her tame and uninteresting.
We may illustrate this by one detail. Lucy Steele's bad English, so
delicately and truthfully indicated, would in the hands of another have
been more obvious, more "effective" in its exaggeration, but the loss
of this comic effect is more than replaced to the cultivated reader by
his relish of the nice discrimination visible in its truthfulness. And
so of the rest. _Strong_ lights are unnecessary, _true_ lights being
at command. The incidents, the characters, the dialogue--all are of
every-day life, and so truthfully presented that to appreciate the art
we must try to imitate it, or carefully compare it with that of others.
We are but echoing an universal note of praise in speaking thus highly
of her works, and it is from no desire of simply swelling that chorus
of praise that we name her here, but to call attention to the peculiar
excellence, at once womanly and literary, which has earned this
reputation. Of all imaginative writers she is the most _real_. Never
does she transcend her own actual experience, never does her pen trace
a line that does not touch the experience of others. Herein we
recognize the first quality of literature. We recognize the second and
more special quality of womanliness in the tone and point of view; they
are novels written by a woman, an Englishwoman, a gentlewoman; no
signature could disguise that fact; and because she has so faithfully
(although unconsciously) kept to her own womanly point of view, her
works are durable. There is nothing of the _doctrinaire_ in Jane
Austen; not a trace of woman's "mission;" but as the most truthful,
charming, humorous, pure-minded, quick-witted and unexaggerated of
writers, female literature has reason to be proud of her.
And this is her suggestive portrait of the other, drawn with that skill
which is only displayed when one genius interprets another through
community of feeling and purpose.