Notwithstanding the subject, there are almost no heroines in novels.
There are impossibly good women, absurdly patient and brave women, but
few heroines as the convention of worldly thinking demands heroines.
There is an endless train of what Thackeray so aptly described as “pale,
pious, and pulmonary ladies” who snivel and snuffle and sigh and
linger irresolutely under many trials which a little common sense would
dissolve; but they are pathological heroines. “Little Nell,” “Little
Eva,” and their married sisters are unquestionable in morals, purpose
and faith; but oh! how--they--do--try--the--nerves! How brave and noble
was Jennie Deans, but how thick-headed was the dear lass!
These women who are merely good, and enforce it by turning on the faucet
of tears, or by old-fashioned obstinacy, or stupidity of purpose, can
scarcely be called heroines by the canons of understood definition.
On the other hand, the conventions do not permit us to describe as a
heroine any lady who has what is nowadays technically called “a past.”
The very best men in the world find splendid heroism and virtue in Tess
l'Durbeyfield. There is nowhere an honest, strong, good man, full of
weakness, though he may be, scarred so much, however with fault, who
does not read St. John vii., 3-11, with sympathy, reverence and Amen!
The infallible critics can prove to a hair that this passage is an
interpolation. An interpolation in that sense means something inserted
to deceive or defraud; a forgery. How can you defraud or deceive anybody
by the interpolation of pure gold with pure gold? How can that be a
forgery which hurts nobody, but gives to everybody more value in the
thing uttered? If John vii., 3-11, is an interpolation let us hope
Heaven has long ago blessed the interpolator. Does anybody--even the
infallible critic--contend that Jesus would not have so said and done
if the woman had been brought to Him? Was that not the very flower and
savor and soul of His teaching? Would He have said or done otherwise?
If the Ten Commandments were lost utterly from among men there would yet
remain these four greater:
“Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.”
“Suffer little children to come unto me.”
“Go and sin no more.”
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
My lords and ladies, men and women, the Ten Commandments, by the side of
these sighs of gentleness, are the Police Court and the Criminal Code,
which are intended to pay cruelty off in punishment. These Four are
the tears with which sympathy soothes the wounds of suffering. Blessed
interpolator of St. John!
There are three marvelous novels in the Bible--not Novels in the sense
of fiction, but in the sense of vivid, living narratives of human
emotions and of events. A million Novels rest on those nine verses in
John, and the nine verses are better than the million books. The story
of David and Uriah's wife is in a similar catalogue as regards quality
and usefulness; the story of Esther is a pearl of great beauty.
* * * * *
But to return to heroines, let us make a volte face. There is an old
story of the lady who wrote rather irritably to Thackeray, asking,
curtly, why all the good women he created were fools and the bright
women all bad. “The same complaint,” he answered, “has been made,
Madame, of God and Shakespeare, and as neither has given explanation I
can not presume to attempt one.” It was curt and severe, and, of course,
Thackeray did not write it as it would appear, even though he may have
said as much jestingly to some intimate who understood the epigram;
but was not the question rather impudently intrusive? Thackeray, you
remember, was the “seared cynic” who created Caroline Gann, the gentle,
beautiful, glorious “Little Sister,” the staunch, pure-hearted woman
whose character not even the perfect scoundrelism of Dr. George Brand
Firmin could tarnish or disturb. If there are heroines, surely she has
her place high amid the noble group!
There are plenty of intelligent persons sacramentally wedded to mere
conventions of good and bad. You could never persuade them that Rebecca
Sharp--that most perfect daughter of Thackeray's mind--was a heroine.
But of course she was. In that world wherein she was cast to live she
was indubitably, incomparably, the very best of all the inhabitants
to whom you are intimately introduced. Capt. Dobbin? Oh, no, I am not
forgetting good Old Dob. Of all the social door mats that ever I
wiped my feet upon Old Dob is certainly the cleanest, most patient,
serviceable and unrevolutionary. But, just a door mat, with the virtues
and attractions of that useful article of furniture--the sublime,
immortal prig of all the ages, or you can take the head of any
novel-reader under thirty for a football. You may have known many women,
from Bernadettes of Massavielle to Borgias of scant neighborhoods, but
you know you never knew one who would marry Old Dob, except as that
emotional dishrag, Amelia, married him--as the Last Chance on the
stretching high-road of uncertain years. No girl ever willingly marries
door mats. She just wipes her feet on them and passes on into the
drawing room looking for the Prince. It seems to me one of the
triumphant proofs of Becky as a heroine that she did not marry Captain
Dobbin. She might have done it any day by crooking her little finger at
him--but she didn't.
Madame Becky, that smart daughter of an alcoholic gentleman artist
and of his lady of the French ballet, inherited the perfect non-moral
morality of the artist blood that sang mercurially through her veins.
How could she, therefore, how could she, being non-moral, be immoral? It
is clear nonsense. But she did possess the instinctive artist
morality of unerring taste for selection in choice. Examine the facts
meticulously--meticulously--and observe how carefully she selected that
best in all that worst she moved among.
In the will I shall some day leave behind me there will be devised, in
primogenitural trust forever, the priceless treasure of conviction that
Becky was innocent of Lord Steyne. I leave it to any gentleman who has
had the great opportunity to look in familiarly upon the outer and upper
fringes of the world of unclassed and predatory women and the noble
lords that abound thereamong. Let him read over again that famous scene
where Becky writes her scorn upon Steyne's forehead in the noble blood
of that aristocratic wolf. Then let him give his decision, as an honest
juryman upon his oath, whether he is convinced that the most noble
Marquis was raging because he was losing a woman, or from the discovery
that he was one of two dupes facing each other, and that he was the fool
who had paid for both and had had “no run for his money!” Marquises of
Steyne do not resent sentimental losses--they can be hurt only in their
sportsmanship.
You may begin with the Misses Pinkerton (in whose select school Becky
absorbed the intricate hypocrisies and saturated snobbery of the highest
English society) and follow her through all the little and big turmoils
of her life, meeting on the way of it all the elaborated differentials
of the country-gentleman and lady tribe of Crawley, the line officers
and bemedalled generals of the army (except honest O'Dowd and his lady),
the most noble Marquis and his shadowy and resigned Marchioness, the
R--y--l P--rs--n--ge himself--even down to the tuft-hunters Punter and
Loder--and if Becky is not superior to every man and woman of them in
every personal trait and grace that calls for admiration--then, why, by
George! do you take such an interest, such an undying interest, in her?
You invariably take the greatest interest in the best character in a
story--unless it's too good and gets “sweety” and “sticky” and so sours
on your philosophical stomach. You can't possibly take any interest in
Dobbin--you just naturally, emphatically, and in the most unreflecting
way in the world, say “Oh, d--n Dobbin!” and go right ahead after
somebody else. I don't say Becky was all that a perfect Sunday School
teacher should have been, but in the group in which she was born to move
she smells cleaner than the whole raft of them--to me.
* * * * *
Thackeray was, next to Shakespeare, the writer most wonderfully combined
of instinct and reason that English literature of grace has produced. He
has been compared with the Frenchman, Balzac. Since I have no desire to
provoke squabbles about favorite authors, let us merely definitely agree
that such a comparison is absurd and pass on. Because you must have
noticed that Balzac was often feeble in his reason and couldn't make it
keep step with his instinct, while in Thackeray they both step together
like the Siamese twins. It is a very striking fact, indeed, that during
all Becky's intense early experiences with the great world, Thackeray
does not make her guilty. All the circumstances of that world were
guilty and she is placed amidst the circumstances; but that is all.
“The ladies in the drawing room,” said one lady to Thackeray, when
“Vanity Fair” in monthly parts publishing had just reached the
catastrophe of Rawdon, Rebecca, old Steyne and the bracelet--“The
ladies have been discussing Becky Sharpe and they all agree that she was
guilty. May I ask if we guessed rightly?”
“I am sure I don't know,” replied the “seared cynic,” mischievously. “I
am only a man and I haven't been able to make up my mind on that point.
But if the ladies agree I fear it may be true--you must understand your
sex much better than we men!”
That is proof that she was not guilty with Steyne. But straightway then,
Thackeray starts out to make her guilty with others. It is so much the
more proof of her previous innocence that, incomparable artist as he
was in showing human character, he recognized that he could convince
the reader of her guilt only by disintegrating her, whipping himself
meanwhile into a ceaseless rage of vulgar abuse of her, a thing of which
Thackeray was seldom guilty. But it was not really Becky that
became guilty--it was the woman that English society and Thackeray
remorselessly made of her. I wouldn't be a lawyer for a wagon load of
diamonds, but if I had had to be a lawyer I should have preferred to
be a solicitor at the London bar in 1817 to write the brief for the
respondent in the celebrated divorce case of Crawley vs. Crawley.
Against the back-ground of the world she lived in Becky could have been
painted as meekly white and beautiful as that lovely old picture of St.
Cecilia at the Choir Organ.
Perhaps Becky was not strictly a heroine; but she was a honey.
* * * * *
Men can not “create” heroines in the sense of shadowing forth what
they conceive to be the glory, beauty, courage and splendor of womanly
character. It is the indescribable sum of womanhood corresponding to the
unutterable name of God. The true man's love of woman is a spirit sense
attending upon the actual senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting
and smelling. The woman he loves enters into every one of these senses
and thus is impounded five-fold upon that union of all of them, which,
together with the miracle of mind, composes what we call the human soul
as a divine essence. She is attached to every religion, yet enters with
authority into none. She is first at its birth, the last to stay
weeping at its death. In every great novel a heroine, unnamed, unspoken,
undescribed, hovers throughout like an essence. The heroism of woman
is her privacy. There is to me no more wonderful, philosophical,
psychological and delicate triumph of literary art in existence than the
few chapters in “Quo Vadis” in which that great introspective genius,
Sienkiewicz, sets forth the growth of the spell of love with which Lygia
has encompassed Vinicius, and the singular development and progress of
the emotion through which Vinicius is finally immersed in human love of
Lygia and in the Christian reverence of her spiritual purity at the same
time. It is the miracle of soul in sex.
Every clean-hearted youth that has had the happiness to marry a good
woman--and, thank Heaven, clean youths and good women are thick as
leaves in Vallambrosa in this sturdy old world of ours--every such youth
has had his day of holy conversion, his touch of the wand conferring
upon him the miracle of love, and he has been a better and wiser man
for it. Not sense love, not the instinctive, restless love of matter for
matter, but the love that descends like the dove amid radiance.
* * * * *
We've all seen that bridal couple; she is as pretty as peaches; he is as
proud of her as if she were a splendid race horse; he glories in knowing
she is lovely and accepts the admiration offered to her as a tribute to
his own judgment, his own taste and even his merit, which obtained her.
There is a certain amount of silliness in her which he soon detects,
a touch of helplessness, and unsophistication in knowledge of worldly
things that he yet feels is mysteriously guarded against intrusion
upon and which makes companionship with her sometimes irksome. He feels
superior and uncompensated; from the superb isolation of his greater
knowledge, courage and independence, he grants to her a certain tender
pity and protection; he admits her faith and purity and--er--but--you
see, he is sorry she is not quite the well poised and noble creature he
is! Mr. Youngwed is at this time passing through the mental digestive
process of feeling his oats. He is all right, though, if he is half as
good as he thinks he is. He has not been touched by the live wire of
experience--yet; that's all.
Well, in the course of human events, there comes a time when he is
frightened to death, then greatly relieved and for a few weeks becomes
as proud as if he had actually provided the last census of the United
States with most of the material contained in it. A few months later,
when the feeble whines and howls have found increased vigor of utterance
and more frequency of expression; when they don't know whether Master
Jack or Miss Jill has merely a howling spell or is threatened with fatal
convulsions; when they don't know whether they want a dog-muzzle or a
doctor; when Mr. Youngwed has lost his sleep and his temper, together,
and has displayed himself with spectacular effect as a brute, selfish,
irritable, helpless, resourceless and conquered--then--then, my dear
madame, you have doubtless observed him decrease in self-estimated size
like a balloon into which a pin has been introduced, until he looks, in
fact, like Master Frog reduced in bulk from the bull-size, to which he
aspired, to his original degree.
At that time Mrs. Youngwed is very busy with little Jack or Jill, as the
case may be. Her husband's conduct she probably regards with resignation
as the first heavy burden of the cross she is expected to bear. She
does not reproach him, it is useless; she has perhaps suspected that
his assumed superiority would not stand the real strain. But, he is the
father of the dear baby and, for that precious darling's sake, she will
be patient. I wonder if she feels that way? She has every right to, and,
for one, I say that I'll be hanged if I find any fault with her if she
does. That is the way she must keep human, and so balance the little
open accounts that married folks ought to run between themselves for
the purpose of keeping cobwebs and mildew off, or rather of maintaining
their lives as a running stream instead of a stagnant pond. A little
good talking back now and then is good for wives and married men.
Don't be afraid, Mrs. Youngwed; and when the very worst has come, why
cry--at--him! One tear weighs more and will hit him harder than an ax.
In the lachrymal ducts with which heaven has blessed you, you are more
surely protected against the fires of your honest indignation than you
are by the fire department against a blaze in the house. And be
patient, also; remember, dear sister, that, though you can cry, he has
a gift--that--enables--him--to--swear! You and other wedded wives very
properly object to swearing, but you will doubtless admit that there
is compensation in that when he does swear in his usual good form
you--never--feel--any--apprehension--about--the--state--of--his--health!
This natural outburst of resentment has not lasted three minutes. Mr.
Y. has returned to his couch, sulky and ashamed. He pretends to sleep
ostentatiously; he--does--not! He is thinking with remarkable intensity
and has an eye open. He sees the slender figure in the dim light,
hanging over the crib, he hears the crooning, he begins to suspect that
there is an alloy in his godlikeness. He looks to earth, listens to the
thin, wailing cries, wonders, regrets, wearies, sleeps. At that moment
Mrs. Y. should fall on her knees and rejoice. She would if she could
leave young Jack or Jill; but she can't--she--never--can. That's
what sent Mr. Y. to sleep. It is just as well perhaps that Mrs. Y. is
unobservant.
A miracle is happening to Mr. Y. In an hour or two, let us say, there
is a new vocal alarm from the crib. Almost with the first suspicion
of fretfulness or pain the mother has heard it. Heaven's mysterious
telepathy of instinct has operated. Between angels, babies and mothers
the distance is no longer than your arm can reach. They understand, feel
and hear each other, and are linked in one chain. So, that, when Mr.
Y. has struggled laboriously awake and wonders
if--that--child--is--going--to--howl--all----. Well, he goes no further.
In the dim light he sees again the slender figure hanging over the crib,
he hears the crooning and the retreating sobs. It is just as he saw
and heard before he fell asleep. No complaints, no reproaches, no
irritation. Oh, what a brute he feels! He battles with his reason and
his bewilderment. Had he fallen asleep and left her to bear that strain;
or has she gone anew to the rescue, while he slept without thought? Up
out of his heart the tenderness wells; down into his mind the revelation
comes. The miracle works. He looks and listens. In the figure hanging
there so patiently and tenderly he sees for the first time the wonderful
vision of the sweetheart wife, not lost, but enveloped in the mystery of
motherhood; he hears in the crooning voice a tone he never before knew.
Mother and child are united in mysterious converse. Where did that girl
whom he thought so unsophisticated of the world learn that marvel of
acquaintance with that babe, so far removed from his ability to reach?
It must be that while he knew the world, she understood the secret of
heaven. She is so patient. What a brute he is to grow impatient, when
she endures day and night in rapt patience and the joy of content! She
can enter a world from which he is barred. And, that is his wife!
That was his sweetheart, and is now--ah, what is she? He feels somehow
abashed; he knows that if he were ten times better than he is he might
still feel unworthy to touch the latchet of her shoes; he feels that
reverence and awe have enveloped her, and that the first happy love and
longing are springing afresh in his heart. It is his wife and his
child; apart from him unless he can note and understand that miracle
of nature's secret. Can he? Well, he will try--oh, what a brute! And he
watches the bending figure, he hears the blending of soft crooning and
retreating sobs--and, listening, he is lost in the wonder and falls
under the spell asleep.
Mrs. Y., you are happy henceforth, if you will disregard certain small
matters, such as whether chairs or hat-racks are for hats, or whether
the marble mantelpiece or the floor is intended for polishing boot
heels.
* * * * *
Of course, such an incident as has been suggested is but one of
thousands of golden moments when to the husband comes the sudden
dazzling recognition of the mergence of that half-sweetheart,
half-mistress, he has admired and a little tired of, into the
reverential glory and loveliness of wifehood, motherhood, companionhood,
through all life and on through the eternity of inheritance they shall
leave to Jacks and Jills and their little sisters and brothers. In
that lies the priceless secret of Christianity and its influence.
The unspeakably immoral Greeks reared a temple to Pity; the grossest
mythologies of Babylon, Greece, Rome and Carthage could not change
human nature. There have been always persons whose temperament made
them sympathize with grief and pity the suffering; who, caring none
for wealth, had no desire to steal; who purchased a little pleasure for
vanity in the thanks received for kindness given. But Christianity saw
the jewel underneath the passing emotion and gave it value by
cleansing and cutting it. In lust-love is the instinctive secret of the
preservation of the race; but the race is not worth preserving that it
may be preserved only for lust. Upon that animal foundation is to be
built the radiant home of confident, enduring and exchanging love
in which all the senses, tastes, hopes, aspirations and delights of
friendship, companionship and human society shall find hospitality
and comfort. When it has been achieved it is beautiful, a twin to the
delicate rose that lies in its own delicious fragrance, happy on the
pure bosom of a lovely girl--the rose that is finest and most exquisite
because it has sprung from the horrid heat of the compost; but who shall
think of the one in the presence of the pure beauty of the other?
Nature and art are entirely unlike each other, though the one simulates
the other. The art of beauty in writing, said Balzac, is to be able
to construct a palace upon the point of a needle; the art of beauty
in living and loving is to build all the beauty of social life and
aspiration upon the sordid yet solid and persisting instincts of
savagery that lie deep at the bottom of our gross natures.
* * * * *
Now, it is in this tender sacred atmosphere, such as Mr. and Mrs.
Youngwed always pass through, that the man worthy of a woman's
confidence finds the radiant ideal of his heroine. He may with propriety
speak of these transfigured personalities to his intimates or write of
them with kindly pleasantry and suggestion as, perhaps, this will be
considered. But, there is a monitor within that restrains him from
analyzing and describing and dragging into the glare of publicity the
sacred details that give to life all its secret happiness, faith and
delight. To do so would be ten times worse offense against the ethics
of unwritten and unspoken things than describing with pitiless precision
the death beds of children, as Little Nell, Paul Dombey, Dora, Little
Eva, and, thank heaven! only a few others.
How can anybody bear to read such pages without feeling that he is
an intruder where angels should veil their faces as they await the
transformation?
“It is not permitted to do evil,” says the philosopher, “that good may
result.”
There are some things that should remain unspoken and undescribed. Have
you never listened to some great brute of a sincere preacher of the
gospel, as he warned his congregation against the terrible dangers
attending the omission of purely theological rites upon infants? Have
you thought of the mothers of those children, listening, whose little
ones were sick or delicate, and who felt each word of that hard, ominous
warning as an agonizing terror? And haven't you wanted to kick the
minister out of the pulpit, through the reredos and into the middle
of next week? How can anybody harrow up such tender feelings? How can
anybody like to believe that a little child will be held to account?
Many of us do so believe, perhaps, whether or no; but is it not cruel
to shake the rod of terror over us in public? “Suffer little children
to come unto Me,” said the Master; He did not instruct us to drive them
with fear and terror and trembling. Whenever I have heard such sermons I
have wanted to get up and stalk out of the church with ostentatiousness
of contempt, as if to say to the preacher that his conduct
did--not--meet--with--my--approval. But I didn't; the philosopher has
his cowardice not less than the preacher.
But there is something meretricious and cheap in the use of material
and subjects that lie warm against the very secret heart of nature. The
mystery of love and the sanctity of death are to be used by writers and
artists only in their ennobling aspect of results. A certain class of
French writers have sickened the world by invading the sacredness of
passion and giving prostitution the semblance of self-abnegated love; a
certain class of English and American writers have purchased popularity
by the meretricious parade of the scenes of death-beds. Both are
violations of the ethics of art as they are of nature. True love as
true sorrow shrinks from exhibition and should be permitted to enjoy
the sacredness of privacy. The famous women of the world, Herodias,
Semiramis, Aspasia, Thais, Cleopatra, Sapho, Messalina, Marie de
Medici, Catherine of Russia, Elizabeth of England--all of them have been
immoral. Publicity to women is like handling to peaches--the bloom comes
off, whether or not any other harm occurs. In literature, the great
feminine figures, George Sand, Madame de Sevigne, Madame de Stael,
George Eliot--all were banned and at least one--the first--was out of
the pale. Creative thought has in it the germ of masculinity. Genius in
a woman, as we usually describe genius, means masculinity, which, of all
things, to real men is abhorrent in woman. True genius in woman is the
antithesis of the qualities that make genius in man; so is her heroism,
her beauty, her virtue, her destiny and her duty.
Let this be said--even though it be only a jest--one of those smart
attempts at epigram, which, ladies, a man has no more power to resist
than a baby to resist the desire to improve his thumb by sucking
it--that: whenever you find a woman who looks real--that is, who
produces upon a real man the impression of being endowed with
the splendid gifts for united and patient companionship in
marriage--whenever you find her advocating equal suffrage, equal rights,
equal independence with men in all things, you may properly run away.
Equality means so much, dear sisters. No man can be your equal; you can
not be his, without laying down the very jewels of the womanliness
that men love. Be thankful you have not this strength and daring;
he possesses those in order that he many stand between you and more
powerful brutes. Now, let us try for a smart epigram: But no! hang the
epigram, let it go. This, however, may be said: That, whenever you find
a woman wanting all rights with man; wanting his morals to be judged
by hers, or willing to throw hers in with his, or itching to enter his
employments and labors and willing that he shall--of course--nurse the
children and patch the small trousers and dresses, depend upon it that
some weak and timid man has been neglecting the old manly, savage duty
of applying quiet home murder as society approves now and then.