Afterwards he continues: “Look at this Madame de Burne who is so charming, so amiable, so clever and so fascinating. It is not her wishes that torment her, it is her nerves. She thinks, she does not feel; or she thinks her feelings. She is proud of her intellect and has no idea of the narrowness of her intelligence. Nothing interests her in which she cannot make herself the central point. She expects too much from men, she expects too much from their goodness, their nature, their character, their delicacy, while she herself never has anything to give that is not for every one alike. Woman was created and came into the world for two purposes—for love and for the child. But this kind of woman is incapable of loving and does not wish for children. If she happens to have any, they are a misfortune and a burden to her.”
Then follows a subtle criticism of this entire group of women, who are to be met with in all countries at a certain level of culture, especially where comfortable circumstances predominate. Flowery declaimers for the most part, women who interest themselves in every kind of question—pampered beings with numerous wants and an affectation of simplicity. A description of these “détraquées contemporaines,” to whom Madame de Burne belongs, flows from the pen of Lamarthe in his novel called One of Them. He writes as follows:
“They are a new race of women with reasoning, hysterical nerves excited by a thousand contradictory emotions, which are hardly worthy of being called wishes; disappointed with life without having tasted anything owing to lack of experience; void of passion, void of affection, they unite the temper of spoilt children with the dulness of aged sceptics.”
IV
The great merit of these books consists in the boldness with which they force their way into a new and intricate sphere of psychological study. They lay hold on woman in the hidden depths of her personality, as one who stands alone and lives her own life—her life of the many days, weeks, months, years, when she grows in herself, educates and miseducates herself in the loneliness of her being, in that inner life which is made up of wishes, dreams, hopes and disillusions, before any appointed man and any appointed event appears on the horizon of her soul. And should the appointed man and the appointed event come at last, or should anything else, anything unexpected come into her life, it very often happens that the entire spiritual construction is already completed, the material hardened, and the feelings have lost their power of adaptability. These phenomena and their offshoots have as yet scarcely been taken into consideration by literature. Novels have always begun with love when dealing with woman, and the subject was always her relationship to man, or her preparation for that relationship. But this is a simplification of the subject which rests on the ingenuousness of an obsolete philosophy of life. Life is not as simple as ruder minds would have us think; and before all else there is one fact that deserves recognition: Life advances and humanity changes.
We are standing on the threshold of a new culture, the nature of which depends on the mental and spiritual qualities of the individuals who are its bearers. It may be like a mighty bird which spreads its broad wings and soars into the darkest space of futurity, or it may be like a misshapen monster that falls to the earth. We have never yet caught sight of the bird with the broad wings, but of monsters we have already seen several.
The contributions of French culture have hitherto been the forerunners of a highly susceptible race. But the signs are not wanting to show that the genuine stream of literary production in France is beginning to wane.
Even in these books there are interesting and deep-rooted problems leading up to the conventional Chambre garnie love, which must never be absent from any novel that is to satisfy the French public. The French are conquerors, but they are not colonists.
It is left to the Teutonic intellect to force its way into these preserves, to plough the ground and to enter into possession.