There is little profit in asking ourselves or others whether life be a desirable possession. It is thrust upon us, without concurrence on our part. Unless we can abolish compulsory birth, our relish for the situation is not a controlling force. “Every child,” we are told, “is sent to school a hundred years before he is born;” but he can neither profit by his schooling nor refuse his degree. Here we are in a world which holds much pain and many pleasures, oceans of tears and echoes of laughter. Our position is not without dignity, because we can endure; and not without enjoyment, because we can be merry. Gayety, to be sure, requires as much courage as endurance; but without courage the battle of life is lost. “To reckon dangers too curiously, to hearken too intently for the threat that runs through all the winning music of the world, to hold back the hand from the rose because of the thorn, and from life because of death,—this is to be afraid of Pan.”
THE POINT OF VIEW
Look contentedly upon the scattered difference of things.—Sir Thomas Browne.
Fiction is the only field in which women started abreast with men, and have not lagged far behind. Their success, though in no wise brilliant, has been sufficiently assured to call forth a vast deal of explanation from male critics, who deem it necessary to offer reasons for what is not out of reason, to elucidate what can never be a mystery. Not very many years ago a contributor to the “Westminster Review” asserted seriously that “the greater affectionateness” of women enabled them to write stories, and that “the domestic experiences, which form the bulk of their knowledge, find an appropriate place in novels. The very nature of fiction calls for that predominance of sentiment which befits the feminine mind.”
It is not easy, however, to account for Miss Austen and Miss Brontë, for George Eliot and George Sand, on the score of “affectionateness” and domesticity. The quality of their work has won for them and for their successors the privilege of being judged by men’s standards, and of being forever exempt from that fatal word, “considering.” All that is left of the half-gallant, half-condescending tone with which critics indulgently praised “Evelina” is a well-defined and clearly expressed sentiment in favour of women’s heroines, and a corresponding reluctance—on the part of men at least—to tolerate their heroes. Mr. Henley voiced the convictions of his sex when he declared his readiness to accept, “with the humility of ignorance, and something of the learner’s gratitude,” all of George Eliot’s women, “from Romola down to Mrs. Pullet” (up to Mrs. Pullet, one would rather say), and his lively mistrust of the “governesses in revolt,” whom it has pleased her to call men. Heroes of the divided skirt, every one of them, was his verdict. Deronda, an incarnation of woman’s rights. Tito, an improper female in breeches. Silas Marner, a good, perplexed old maid. Lydgate alone has “aught of the true male principle about him.”
This is a matter worthy of regard, because the charm of a novel is based largely upon the attraction its hero has for women, and its heroine for men. Incident, dialogue, the development of minor characters,—these things have power to please; but the enduring triumph of a story depends upon the depth of our infatuation for somebody that figures in it, and here, as elsewhere, the instinct of sex reigns supreme. Why is it impossible for a man, who is not an artist or an art-critic, to acknowledge that the great portraits of the world are men’s portraits? Because he has given his heart to Mona Lisa, or to Rembrandt’s Saskia, or to some other beauty, dead and gone. Why do we find in the Roman Catholic Church that it is invariably a man who expounds the glory of Saint Theresa, and a woman who piously supplicates Saint Anthony? The same rule holds good in fiction. Clarissa Harlowe has been loved as ardently as Helen of Troy. Mr. Saintsbury gives charming expression to this truth in his preface to “Pride and Prejudice.”
“In the novels of the last hundred years,” he says, “there are vast numbers of young ladies with whom it might be a pleasure to fall in love; there are at least five with whom, as it seems to me, no man of taste and spirit can help doing so. Their names are, in chronological order, Elizabeth Bennet, Diana Vernon, Argemone Lavington, Beatrix Esmond, and Barbara Grant. I should have been most in love with Beatrix and Argemone; I should, I think, for mere occasional companionship, have preferred Diana and Barbara Grant. But to live with and to marry, I do not know that any one of the four can come into competition with Elizabeth.”
This choice little literary seraglio is by no means the only one selected with infinite care by critics too large-minded for monogamy, while passions more exclusive burn with intenser flame. Of Beatrix Esmond it might be said that Thackeray was the only man who never succumbed to her charms. Women have been less wont to confess their infatuations,—perhaps for lack of opportunity,—but they have cherished in their hearts a long succession of fictitious heroes, most of them eminently unworthy of regard. We know how they puzzled and distressed poor Richardson by their preference for that unpardonable villain, Lovelace, whom honest men loathe. Even in these chill and seemly days they seek some semblance of brutality. The noble, self-abnegating hero has little chance with them. The perplexed hero has even less. It is a significant circumstance that, of all the characters upon whom Mrs. Humphry Ward has lavished her careful art, Helbeck of Bannisdale, who doesn’t know the meaning of perplexity, and who has no weak tolerance for other people’s views, makes the sharpest appeal to feminine taste. But masculine taste rejects him.
Rejects him, not more sharply, perhaps, than it is wont to reject any type of manhood put forward urgently by a woman. There was a time when Rochester was much in vogue, and girls young enough to cherish illusions wove them radiantly around that masterful lover who wooed in the fashion of the Conqueror. But men looked ever askance upon his volcanic energies and emotions. They failed to see any charm in his rudeness, and they resented his lack of retenue. Robust candour is a quality which civilization—working in the interests of both sexes—has wisely thought fit to discard. Even Mr. Birrell, who is disposed to leniency where Charlotte Brontë’s art is concerned, admits that while Rochester is undeniably masculine, and not a governess in revolt, he is yet “man described by woman,” studied from the outside by one who could only surmise. And of the fierce and adorable little professor, the “sallow tiger” who is the crowning achievement of “Villette,” he has still more serious doubts. “Some good critics there are who stick to it that in his heart of hearts Paul Emanuel was a woman.”
Does this mean that femininity, backed by genius, cannot grasp the impalpable something which is the soul and essence of masculinity? Because then it follows that masculinity, backed by genius, cannot grasp the impalpable something which is the soul and essence of femininity. Such a limitation has never yet been recognized and deplored. On the contrary, there are novelists, like Mr. Hardy, and Mr. George Meredith, and Mr. Henry James, who are considered to know a great deal more about women than women know about themselves, and to be able to give the sex some valuable points for its own enlightenment. Just as Luini and Leonardo da Vinci are believed to have grasped the subtleties hidden deep in the female heart, and to have betrayed them upon their imperishable canvases in a lurking smile or a gleam from half-shut eyes, so Mr. Meredith and Mr. James are believed to have betrayed these feminine secrets in the ruthless pages of their novels. Mr. Boyesen, for example, did not hesitate to say that no woman could have drawn a character like Diana of the Crossways, and endowed her with “that nameless charm,” because “the sentiment that feels and perceives it is wholly masculine.” Why should not this rule work both ways, and a nameless charm be given to some complex and veracious hero, because the sentiment that feels and perceives it is wholly feminine? Mrs. Humphry Ward strove for just such a triumph in her portrait of Edward Manisty, but she strove in vain. Yet if the attraction of one sex for the other be mutual, why should it enlighten the man and confuse the woman? Or is this enlightenment less penetrating than it appears? Perhaps a rare perfection in recognizing and reproducing detail may be mistaken for a firm grasp upon the whole.