“no young lady should fall in love till the offer has been made,
accepted, the marriage ceremony performed, and the first half-year
of wedded life has passed away. A woman may then begin to love, but
with great precaution, very coolly, very moderately, very rationally.
If she ever loves so much that a harsh word or a cold look cuts her
to the heart, she is a fool. If she ever loves so much that her
husband’s will is her law, and that she has got into the habit of
watching his looks in order that she may anticipate his wishes, she
will soon be a neglected fool.”
On the other hand, “if you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me,
and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel
society, as it is, insipid, you would pity me and I daresay despise me.”
Her emotion on first seeing the sea is absolutely overpowering; and
surely we know the woman who insisted on visiting a maidservant
“attacked by a violent fever,” fearlessly entered her room in spite
of every remonstrance, “threw herself on the bed beside her, and
repeatedly kissed her burning brow.”
Experience with her, in fact, had never been confined to the external
happenings, which can be accumulated, with more or less sympathy, by
the biographer; and her own declaration of how she worked up episodes
outside her own experience may be applied, without much modification,
to her manipulation of that experience itself. Asked whether the
description of taking opium in _Villette_ was based on knowledge,
“She replied, that she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of
it in any shape, but that she had followed the process she always
adopted when she had to describe anything which had not fallen within
her own experience; she had thought intently on it for many and many
a night before falling to sleep--wondering what it was like or how it
would be--till at length, sometimes after the progress of her story
had been arrested at this one point for weeks, she wakened up in the
morning with all clear before her, as if she had in reality gone
through the experience, and then could describe it word for word as it
had happened.”
It is obvious that, if no less feminine than her predecessors, the
nature and methods of Charlotte Brontë would produce very different
work from theirs. In narrative and description she remains domestic and
middle-class. She does not adopt the “high” notions of aristocracy, she
does not plunge into the mysteries of crime. Her plots are laid “at
home,” so to speak, and among the professional classes or small gentry
with whom she was personally familiar. The only material which may be
noticed as a new departure is derived from her particular experiences
in schools in England and abroad, combined with her intimate knowledge
of the governess and the tutor. In _Shirley_, again, she is one of the
earliest women to devote any serious attention to the progress of
trade and the introduction of machinery, with its effect on the social
problems of the working classes.
In construction, on the other hand, she is admittedly inferior
to her predecessors, since her plots are melodramatic, and her
characterisation is disturbed by a somewhat morbid analysis of unusual
passion. Her feminine ideal has no parallel in the “sensibility”
of Fanny Burney or the sprightly “calm” of Jane Austen. Its most
distinguishing characteristic is, naturally, revealed in the attitude
assumed towards man. The hero, the ideal lover, is always “the Master”
of the heroine. Jane Eyre being a governess and Lucy Snowe a pupil,
we might perhaps miss the full significance of the phrase; but even
the strong-minded Shirley refuses Sir Philip Nunnely, because, among
other reasons, “he is very amiable--very excellent--truly estimable,
but _not my master_; not in one point. I could not trust myself with
his happiness: I would not undertake the keeping of it for thousands; I
will accept no hand that cannot hold me in check.”
Jane Austen once playfully accused herself of having dared to draw a
heroine who had fallen in love without first having ascertained the
gentleman’s feeling. This is the normal achievement--in Charlotte
Brontë--not only of heroines, but _of all women_. It is, of course,
almost inevitable that since, in her work (as in those of her
sister-authors) we see everything _through the minds_ of the women
characters, we should learn the state of their heart _first_; but, in
most cases at least, it is certain that we are in as much doubt as the
heroine herself concerning the man’s feelings, and it is fairly obvious
that often he has actually not made up his mind. The women in Charlotte
Brontë, in fact, are what we now call “doormats.” They delight in
_serving_ the Beloved; they expect him to be a superior being, with
more control over his emotions; less dependent on emotion or even on
domestic comfort, appropriately concerned with matters not suited to
feminine intellects, and accustomed to “keep his own counsel” about the
important decisions of life.
It is her achievement to have secured our enthusiastic devotion to
“females” so thoroughly Early Victorian; for the heroines of Charlotte
Brontë remain some of the most striking figures in fiction. They are
really heroic, and, while glorying in their self-imposed limitations,
become vital by their intensity and depth. Jane Austen once quietly
demonstrated the natural “constancy” of women; Charlotte Brontë paints
this virtue in fiery colours across all her work. Her incidental, but
most marked, preference for _plain_ heroines--inspired, apparently, by
passionate jealousy of popular beauty--serves to emphasise the abnormal
capacity for passion and fidelity which, in her judgment, the power of
easily exciting general admiration apparently tends to diminish.
A contemporary reviewer in the _Quarterly_--probably Lockhart--found
this type of women disgustingly sly. The whole of _Jane Eyre_, indeed,
fills him with holy horror, which is genuine enough, though expressed
with most ungentlemanly virulence, and prefaced with the extraordinary
suggestion that “Jane Eyre is _merely another Pamela_ (!) ... a
small, plain, odd creature, who has been brought up dry upon school
learning, and somewhat stunted accordingly in mind and body, and who
is thrown upon the world as ignorant of its ways, and as destitute
of its friendships, as a shipwrecked mariner upon a strange coast.”
Rochester, on the other hand, he finds “captious and Turklike ... a
strange brute, somewhat in the Squire Western style of absolute and
capricious eccentricity.” The book is guilty of the “highest moral
offence a novel-writer can commit, that of making an unworthy character
interesting in the eyes of the reader. Mr. Rochester is a man who
deliberately and secretly seeks to violate the laws both of God and
man, and yet we will be bound half our lady writers are enchanted with
him for a model of generosity and honour.”
We cannot, to-day, detect the “pedantry, stupidity, or gross
vulgarity” of the novel; nor do we distinguish so sharply between
the sly governess--“this housemaid _beau ideal_ of the arts of
coquetry”--determined to catch Rochester, and the “noble, high-souled
woman” who rejects his dishonourable proposals. The fact seems to be
that masculine critics of those days regarded the _expression_ of
emotion as indelicate in woman. Was it this criticism, or merely her
knowledge of men, that inspired that bitter passage in _Shirley_:
“A lover masculine if disappointed can speak and urge explanation; a
lover feminine can say nothing; if she did, the result would be shame
and anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery. Nature would brand
such demonstration as a rebellion against her instincts, and would
vindictively repay it afterwards by the thunderbolt of self-contempt
smiting suddenly in secret. Take the matter as you find it; ask no
question; utter no remonstrance: it is your best wisdom. You expected
bread, and you have got a stone; break your teeth on it, and don’t
shriek because the nerves are martyrised: do not doubt that your
mental stomach--if you have such a thing--is strong as an ostrich’s:
the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put
into it a scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly
upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time,
after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture,
the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great
lesson how to endure without a sob.”
Men could not conceive that any lady who was _conscious_ of love
had “really nice feelings” about it. Moreover, Jane Eyre is “a mere
heathen ... no Christian grace is perceptible upon her.” She upheld
women’s _rights_, which is “ungrateful” to God. “There is throughout a
murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations
of the poor, which, as far as each individual is concerned, _is a
murmuring against God’s appointment_.” Wherefore the “plain, odd woman,
_destitute of all the conventional features of feminine attraction_,”
is not made interesting, but remains “a being totally uncongenial
to our feelings from beginning to end ... a decidedly vulgar-minded
woman--one whom we should not care for as an acquaintance, whom we
should not seek as a friend, whom we should not desire for a relation,
and whom we should most scrupulously avoid for a governess.”
This outspoken, and unsympathetic, criticism is yet eminently
instructive. It shows us all that Charlotte Brontë accomplished for the
first time; and reveals the full force of prejudice against which she
was, more or less consciously, in revolt.
It remains only to note that in the matter of style her critics at once
recognised her power. “It is impossible not to be spellbound with the
freedom of the touch. It would be mere hackneyed courtesy to call it
‘fine writing.’ It bears no impress of being written at all, but is
poured out rather in the heat and flurry of an instinct which flows
ungovernably on to its object, indifferent by what means it reaches it,
and unconscious too.”
Passing to modern criticism, we find one writer declaring that
Rochester’s character “belongs to the realm of the railway bookstall
shilling novel,” while to another it seems “of all her creations the
most wonderful ... from her own inmost nobility of temper and depth of
suffering she moulded a man, reversing the marvels of God’s creation.”
It is not, I think, necessary to be dogmatic in comparing the
“greatness” of _Villette_ and _Jane Eyre_. The former is “more
elaborated, more mature in execution, but less tragic, less simple
and direct.” The influence of personal tragedy (assuming her love
for Monsieur Heger) obviously permeates the work; leading to the
idealisation of the pedagogue genius (revived in Louis Gerard Moore,
Esq.--himself half Flemish), and to unjust hostility against the
Continental feminine (partially atoned for in Hortense Moore). On the
other hand, it is more in touch with real life; less melodramatic,
though still sensational; more acutely varied, and equally vivid, in
characterisation.
Finally, in _Shirley_, if the spirit of Charlotte Brontë is less
concentrated, it burns with no less steady flame. Here, for almost
the first time in a woman-writer, we find that eager questioning upon
the earlier struggles between capital and labour--the risks attendant
upon the introduction of machinery, the proper relations between
master and men--which afterwards became part of the stock material for
fiction. We find, too, much shrewd comment upon her own experience
of clerical types--no less in the contrast between Helstone and Hall
than in the somewhat heavily satirised curates; and some, probably
inherited, injustice towards Dissenters. The characterisation is far
more varied and more realistic; since we have at least two pairs of
lovers, the numerous Yorke family, and a whole host of “walking ladies
and gentlemen,” more or less carefully portrayed. Local colour appears
in several passages of enthusiastic analysis of Yorkshire manners; and
the philosophy is frequently turned on everyday life. For example:
“In English country ladies there is this point to be remarked.
Whether young or old, pretty or plain, dull or sprightly, they all
(or almost all) have a certain expression stamped on their features,
which seems to say, ‘I know--I do not boast of it--but I _know_ that
I am the standard of what is proper; let everyone therefore whom I
approach, or who approaches me, keep a sharp look-out, for wherein
they differ from me--be the same in dress, manner, opinion, principle,
or practice--therein they are wrong.”
Yet the inspiration of _Shirley_ echoes _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_.
Here, too, as we have seen,--though the heroine is a rich beauty,--Man
should be Master; and “indisputably, a great, good, handsome man is the
first of created things.” Yet neither Shirley nor her friend Caroline
have anything in common with the “average” woman, who, “if her admirers
only _told_ her that she was an angel, would let them _treat_ her like
an idiot”; or with her parents, who “would have delivered her over
to the Rector’s loving-kindness and his tender mercies without one
scruple”; or with the second Mrs. Helstone, who “reversing the natural
order of insect existence, would have fluttered through the honeymoon,
a bright, admired butterfly, and crawled the rest of her days a sordid,
trampled worm.”
_Jane Eyre_, 1847.
_Shirley_, 1849.
_Villette_, 1852.
_The Professor_, 1857.
“JANE EYRE” TO “SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE”
(1847-1858)
EMILY BRONTË (1818-1848) can scarcely, in character or genius, be
accommodated to any ordered consideration of development. Regarded by
many enthusiasts as greater than her more famous sister, she stands
alone for all time. Her one novel, _Wuthering Heights_, is unique for
the passionate intensity of its emotions and the wild dreariness of
its atmosphere. Save for the clumsily introduced stranger, who merely
exists to “hear the story,” the entire plot is woven about seven
characters, all save one nearly related, and a few servants.
“Mr. Heathcliff,” said the second Catherine, “_you_ have _nobody_ to
love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the
revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery.
You _are_ miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious
like him? _Nobody_ loves you--_nobody_ will cry for you when you die! I
wouldn’t be you!”
Charlotte calls him “child neither of Lascar nor gipsy, but a man’s
shape animated by demon life--a Ghoul--an afreet”; and “from the time
when ‘the little black-haired swarthy thing, as dark as if it came
from the Devil,’ was first unrolled out of the bundle and set on its
feet in the farm-house kitchen, to the hour when Nelly Dean found the
grim, stalwart corpse laid on its back on the panel-enclosed bed,
with wide-gazing eyes that seemed to ‘sneer at her attempt to close
them, and parted lips and sharp white teeth that sneered too,’” this
human monster dominates every character and event in the whole book.
Men and women, Linton or Earnshaw, are but pawns in his remorseless
brain; thwarting his will, daring his anger time after time; yet always
submitting at last to the will of their “master”: save, indeed, at
the fall of the curtain, when he had “lost the faculty of enjoying
destruction.” For the passion of Heathcliff’s strange existence
is gloomy revenge--against fate and his own associates. Bitterly
concentrated on the few human beings--all occupying two adjacent
farms--with whom his life is passed, he seems the embodiment of an
eternal curse, directed to thwart every natural feeling, every hope of
happiness or peace.
Emily Brontë reveals no conception of humanity save this fiendish
misanthrope; churlish boors like Hindley and Hareton Earnshaw; weak
good people like Edgar, Isabella, and Linton; passionate sprites like
the two Catherines. Old Joseph indeed contains some elements of the
comic spirit, exhibited in hypocrisy; and Nelly Dean alone has _both_
virtue and strength of character. But in making, or striving to unmake,
marriages between these “opposites”; in forcing their society upon
each other, and hovering around his helpless victims; the arch-fiend
Heathcliff has ample scope for the indulgence of his diabolical whim.
The tormenting of others and of himself; the perverse making of misery
for its own sake; the ingenious exercise of brutal tyranny, are food
and drink to this twisted soul. In ordinary cases we should wonder what
might have happened had Catherine married him. We should set about
picturing Heathcliff in happy possession of the love for which he
craved so mightily: we should have murmured, “What cruel waste.” But
the power of Emily Brontë’s conception denies us such idle imaginings.
Heathcliff was manifestly incapable of “satisfaction” in anything, and
there, as elsewhere, was Catherine his true mate. No circumstances, the
most roseate or ideal, could have tamed his savage nature, quieted his
stormy discontents, or lulled his passion for hurting all creatures
weaker than himself. Such love as his must always have crushed and
devoured what it yearned for: he could never have had enough of it:
have rested in it, or rested upon it. He was, indeed, possessed by the
“eighth devil.”
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