V
Amalie Skram’s talent culminated in “Lucie.” In this book we see her going about in an untidy, dirty, ill-fitting morning gown, and she is perfectly at home. It would scandalize any lady. Authoresses who struggle fearlessly after honest realism—like Frau von Ebner-Eschenbach and George Eliot—might perhaps have touched upon it, but with very little real knowledge of the subject. Amalie Skram, on the other hand, is perfectly at home in this dangerous borderland. She is much better informed than Heinz Tovote, for instance, and he is a poet who sings of women who are not to be met with in drawing-rooms. She describes the pretty ballet girl with genuine enjoyment and true sympathy; but the book falls into two halves, one of which has succeeded and the other failed. Everything that concerns Lucie is a success, including the part about the fine, rather weak-kneed gentleman who supports her, and ends by marrying her, although his love is not of the kind that can be called “ennobling.” All that does not concern Lucie and her natural surroundings is a failure, especially the fine gentleman’s social circle, into which Lucie enters after her marriage, and where she seems to be as little at home as Amalie Skram herself. Many an author and epicurean would have hesitated before writing such a book as “Lucie.” But Amalie Skram’s naturalism is of such an honest and happy nature that any secondary considerations would not be likely to enter her mind, and in the last chapter the brutal naturalism of the story reaches its highest pitch. In the whole of Europe there are only two genuine and honest naturalists, and they are Emile Zola and Amalie Skram.
Her later books—take, for instance, her great Bergen novel, “S. G. Myre,” “Love in North and South,” “Betrayed,” etc.—are not to be compared with the three that we have mentioned. They are naturalistic, of course; their naturalism is of the best kind; they are still unco in de la nature, but they are no longer entirely vu à travers un tempérament. They are no longer quite Amalie Skram.
Norwegian naturalism—we might almost say Teutonic naturalism—culminated in Amalie Skram, this off-shoot of the Gallic race. Compared with her, Fru Leffler and Fru Ahlgren are good little girls, in their best Sunday pinafores; Frau von Ebner is a maiden aunt, and George Eliot a moralizing old maid. All these women came of what is called “good family,” and had been trained from their earliest infancy to live as became their position. All the other women whom I have sketched in this book belonged to the upper classes, and like all women of their class, they only saw one little side of life, and therefore their contribution to literature is worthless as long as it tries to be objective. Naturalism is the form of artistic expression best suited to the lower classes, and to persons of primitive culture, who do not feel strong enough to eliminate the outside world, but reflect it as water reflects an image. They feel themselves in sympathy with their surroundings, but they have not the refined instincts and awakened antipathies which belong to isolation. Where the character differs from the individual consciousness, they do not think of sacrificing their soul as a highway for the multitude, any more than their body—à la Lucie—to the commune bonum.
V
A Young Girl’s Tragedy
I
It seldom happens that a genuine confession penetrates through the intense loneliness in which a person’s inner life is lived; with women, hardly ever. It is rare when a woman leaves any written record of her life at all, and still more rare when her record is of any psychological interest; it is generally better calculated to lead one astray. A woman is not like a man, who writes about himself from a desire to understand himself. Even celebrated women, who are scarce, and candid women, who are perhaps scarcer still, have no particular desire to understand themselves. In fact, I have never known a woman who did not wish, either from a good or bad motive, to remain a terra incognita to her own self, if only to preserve the instinctive element in her actions, which might otherwise have perished. There is also another reason for this reticence. A woman does not live the inner life to anything like the same extent as a man; her instincts, occupations, needs, and interests lie outside herself; whereas a man is more self-contained,—his entire being is developed from within. Woman is spiritually and mentally an empty vessel, which must be replenished by man. She knows nothing about herself, or about man, or about the great silent inflexibility of life, until it is revealed to her consciousness by man. But the woman of our time—and many of the best women, too—manifests a desire to dispense with man altogether; and she whom Nature has destined to be a vessel out of which substance shall grow, wishes to be a substance in herself, out of which nothing can grow, because the substance wherewith she endeavors to fill the void is unorganical, rational, and foreign to her nature. The mistake is tragic, but there is nothing impressive about it; it is merely hopeless, chaotic, heart-rending; and because it is chaotic in itself, it creates a void for the woman who falls into it,—a void in which she perishes. The more talented she is, and the more womanly, the worse it will be for her. And yet it is generally the talented woman who is most strongly attracted by it, and man remains to her both inwardly and outwardly as much a stranger as though he were a being from another planet. What can be the origin of this devastating principle at the core of woman’s being? Among all the learned and celebrated women whom I have attempted to depict in this book, there is not one in whom it has not shown itself, either in a lasting or spasmodic form; but neither is there one who did not suffer acutely on account of it. How did it begin in these women, who were so richly endowed, whose natures were so productive? Was it developed by means of outward suggestion? Or does it mark a state of transition between old and new? It is possible that it is not found only amongst women, but that there is something corresponding to it in men. I shall return to this subject afterwards.
Of all the books which women have written about themselves, I only know of two that are written with the unalloyed freshness of spontaneity, and which are therefore genuine to a degree that would be otherwise impossible; these are Mrs. Carlyle’s diary and Marie Bashkirtseff’s journal. The contents of both books consist chiefly of the cries of despair which issue from the mouths of two women who feel themselves captured and ill-used, and are consequently tired of life, though they do not know the reason nor who is to blame. Mrs. Carlyle was an imbittered woman, unwilling to complain of, yet always indirectly abusing, that disagreeable oddity, Thomas Carlyle; he was an egotistical boor, who required everything and gave nothing in return, and was certainly not the right husband for her. The two books stand side by side: one is the writing of a discontented woman of a much older generation, whose long-suppressed wrath, annoyance, and indignation, combined with bodily and spiritual thirst, resulted in a nervous disease; while the other is far more extraordinary and difficult to comprehend, as it is the writing of a young girl who is rich, talented, and pretty, and who belongs entirely to the present generation of women, since she would be only thirty-four years of age were she living now. Both books are confessions d’outre tombe, and they are both the result of a desire to be silent,—a desire not often felt by women.
Mrs. Carlyle maintained this silence all her life long towards her husband, and it was not until after her death that he discovered, by means of the diary, how little he had succeeded in making her happy; his surprise was great. Marie Bashkirtseff also maintained silence towards an all too affectionate family, consisting of women only. They both possessed a strength of mind which is rare in women, and it was owing to this that they did not confide their troubles to any one; theirs was the pride that belongs to solitude, for they had neither women friends nor confidants, and it was only when they were no longer able to contain themselves that some of their best and worst feelings overflowed into these books,—in Mrs. Carlyle’s case in a few bittersweet drops, but with Marie Bashkirtseff they were more like a foaming torrent filled with thundering whirlpools, with here and there a few quiet places where the stream widens out into a beautiful clear lake, and thin willows bend over the still waters. The one felt that she had not developed into a full-grown woman by her marriage; the other was a young girl who never grew to be a woman; but both are less interesting on account of what they tell us than on account of that which they have not known how to tell. Marie Bashkirtseff’s book, which in the course of ten years has run through almost as many editions, is especially interesting in the latter respect, and is a perfect gold mine for all that has to do with the psychology of young girls.