Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period

by Clara Helen Whitmore

"Deed, and I thought he would do that, for he has always been so kind to me,—and I thought sometimes when I was away, oh, thinks I to myself, I wonder what Glenroy will do for somebody to be angry with,—for Ben-bowie's grown so deaf, poor creature, it's not worth his while to be angry at him,—and you're so gentle that it would not do for him to be angry at you; but I'm sure he has a good right to be angry at me, considering how kind he has always been to me."

Christopher North said of Molly Macaulay, "No sinner of our gender could have adequately filled up the outline."

George Saintsbury, considering the permanent value of Miss Ferrier's work, wrote for the Fortnightly Review in 1882:

"Of the four requisites of the novelist, plot, character, description, and dialogue, she is only weak in the first. The lapse of an entire half-century and a complete change of manners have put her books to the hardest test they are ever likely to have to endure, and they come through it triumphantly."

But, besides the excellences mentioned by Mr. Saintsbury, Miss Ferrier is master of humour and pathos. No story is sadder than that of Ronald Malcolm, the hero of Destiny. He had been willed the castle of Inch Orran with its vast estates, but with the provision that he was to have no benefit from it until his twenty-sixth year. In case of his death the property was to go to his father, an upright but poor man. As Ronald had many years to wait before he could enjoy his riches, he entered the navy. His ship was lost at sea and the news of his death reported in Scotland. But Ronald had been rescued from the sinking ship, and returned to his father's cottage. Here he met a purblind old woman, who told him how his father, Captain Malcolm, had moved to the castle, and what good he was doing among his tenantry. She described the sorrow of the people at the death of Ronald, but added: "Och! it was God's providence to tak' the boy out of his worthy father's way; and noo a' thing 's as it should be, and he has gotten his ain, honest man; and long, long may he enjoy it!" And then she said thankfully, "The poor lad's death was a great blessing—och ay, 'deed was 't." The scene where Ronald goes to the castle and looks in at the window upon the happy family group, consisting of his father and mother, brothers and sisters, resembles in many particulars the sad return of Enoch Arden. The close of the scene is as touching in the novel as in the poem: "Yes, yes, they are happy, and I am forgotten!" sobs the lad, as he turns away.

Miss Ferrier, however, seldom touches the pathetic; she is first of all a humourist. But there is a blending of the smiles and tears of human life in the delightful character of Adam Ramsay. Engaged as a boy to Lizzie Lundie, he had gone forth into the world to make a fortune, but when he returned after many years he found that she had married in his absence, and soon afterwards had died. Crabbed to all about him, he still cherished the remembrance of his early love, and was quickly moved by any appeal to her memory.

The practical philosophy of the Scottish peasantry is amusingly set forth in the scene where Miss St. Clair visits one of the cottages on Lord Rossville's estate. She found the goodman very ill, and everything about the room betokening extreme poverty. When she offered to send him milk and broth, and a carpet and chairs to make the room more comfortable, his wife interposed, "A suit o' gude bein comfortable dead claise, Tammes, wad set ye better than aw the braw chyres an' carpets i' the toon." Sometime afterward, when Miss St. Clair called to see how the invalid was, she found him in the press-bed, while the clothes were warming before the fire. His wife explained that she could not have him in the way, and if he were cold, it could not be helped, as the clothes had to be aired, and added, "An' I 'm thinkin' he 'll no be lang o' wantin' them noo."

But notwithstanding her humour, Miss Ferrier was a stern moralist, whose attitude toward life had been influenced indirectly by the teachings of John Knox. She sometimes seems to stand her characters in the stocks, and call upon the populace to view their sins or absurdities. She seldom throws the veil of charity over them. Men as novelists are prone to exaggeration. Women have represented life with greater truth both in its larger aspects and in details. Miss Ferrier carries this quality to an extreme. She tells not only the truth, but, with almost heartless honesty, reveals the whole of it, so that many of her men and women are repugnant to the reader while they amuse him. The best judges of Scottish manners have borne witness to the exactness of her portraiture. She is, perhaps, an example of the artistic failure of over-realism.

Mary Russell Mitford like Miss Ferrier painted her scenes and her portraits from real life. But there is as wide a difference between their writings as between the rocky ledges of the Grampian Hills and the soft meadows bathed in the sunshine which stretch back of the cottages of Our Village. Miss Mitford's, indeed, was a sunny nature, not to be hardened nor embittered by a lifelong anxiety over poverty and debts. Her father, Dr. Mitford, had spent nearly all his own fortune when he married Miss Mary Russell, an heiress. Besides being constantly involved in lawsuits, he was addicted to gambling, and soon squandered the fortune which his wife had brought him, besides twenty thousand pounds won in a lottery. He is said to have lost in speculations and at play about seventy thousand pounds, at that time a large fortune. The authoress was a little over thirty years of age when the poverty of the family forced them to leave Bertram House, their home for many years, and remove to a little labourer's cottage about a mile away, on the principal street of a little village near Reading, known as Three Mile Cross. Here the support of the family devolved upon the daughter, a burden made harder by the continual extravagance of the father, whom she devotedly loved. Although she received large sums for her writings, it is with the greatest weariness that she writes to her friend Miss Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, of the struggles that have been hers the greater part of her life, the ten or twelve hours of literary drudgery each day, often in spite of ill health, and her hope that she may always provide for her father his accustomed comforts. Not only was she enabled to do this, but, through the help of friends, to pay, after his death, the one thousand pounds indebtedness, his only legacy to her.

Yet there is not a trace of this worry in the delightful series of papers called Our Village, which she began to contribute at this time to the Lady's Magazine. Before this she had become known as a poet and a successful playwright, but had believed herself incapable of writing good prose. Necessity revealed her fine power of description, and Three Mile Cross furnished her with scenes and characters.