Before completing our general conclusions as to the aim and achievement
of women’s work, it may be well to institute certain comparisons
between the four writers of genius around whom we have chronicled our
record of progress; to estimate the ground covered by their work; to
analyse their ideals, witnessing change and development.
Although, as we have seen, all primarily domestic, if not actually
parochial, the middle-class, “set” as a subject by Richardson,
became--more or less consciously--subdivided in their hands. Fanny
Burney confined herself, almost without reserve, to studies of town
life, with an occasional digression to fashionable health resorts.
It is true that her heroines may sigh for a sylvan glade or dream of
green fields: no woman of sensibility could do less. In their minds the
country must inevitably be allied to virtue and content. But we cannot
pretend that the rural scenes of _Camilla_ are drawn from nature; and
Miss Burney was, undoubtedly, most at home in the drawing-room, at
the assembly, in the opera-house, or at the baths. Nowhere else can
we find so vivid and lifelike a picture of Society in the eighteenth
century--the dramatic contrast with “Commerce at play” recalling
_Vanity Fair_. It is here, in fact, that Miss Burney’s exceptional
personal experience gave her the enviable opportunity of drawing both
Mayfair and Holborn at first hand. She is specifically Metropolitan,
though we should not say Cockney. In her imagination there is no world
outside London, no higher ambition than notoriety about Town.
The difference in Jane Austen’s work is almost startling. She seems
practically unaware of London; and it would be difficult to name any
group of intelligent persons so absolutely indifferent to its gaieties,
its activities, or its problems as the characters in _all_ her novels.
It may be that Lucy Steele could not so easily have caught Robert
Ferrars elsewhere; but the few Town chapters in _Sense and Sensibility_
only illustrate our contention as a whole, since the relations between
all remain precisely the same as in the country, and practically
everyone is delighted to “get away again.” The John Knightleys and the
excellent Gardiners, indeed, live in London: but we only meet them
away from home; and, after all, the one “suggestive” comment on town
life is the “unexpected discovery” that people who “live over their
business” were able to “mix with” the County.
Jane Austen’s familiars are all drawn from the most unpromising
circle: those who live “just outside” small towns, have just enough
to live on without working for it, are just sufficiently well-bred
to marry into “the County,” just simple enough to welcome a few
“superior” townspeople. Doctors, attorneys, and--of course--clergymen,
are included, as well as officers, naval or military, retired or
on promotion. Elizabeth’s “He is a gentleman, I am a gentleman’s
daughter,” defines the enclosure. The men, presumably, have business
to transact, affairs to arrange. They read the newspapers and talk
politics--among themselves. But Miss Austen does not concern herself
with these aspects of life. Her heroines are not so gay as Miss
Burney’s; they are not so thoroughly “in the swim.” But her picture is
similarly one of home life, varied by “visiting” and “receiving.” She
describes the distribution of one family into several--by “suitable”
marriages. One section of English society, at one period, in the home,
is completely brought to life again.
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.