To this part of the book, above all others, must be applied what Alaric Watts wrote in 1819: ‘“Women” is a work which, with all its dullness, its monotony of suffering, and its horrible anatomy of the moral frame, stands alone among modern writings—there is nothing like it—its profound and philosophic melancholy, its terrible researches into the deepest abysses of the human heart, and of human feeling—its daring drawing the veil of the “holy of holies,” while the hand that draws it trembles at the touch, make it a work unequalled in the list of English novels.’ This sentence was justified; Women stood alone among contemporary writings. The tendency pointed out by Watts is one which, according to a modern writer,[107] indicates the latest phase in the development of the novel: ‘Yet I think he is but a superficial student of the literature of recorded time who does not note one tendency of later work, of later method, of later procedure, of later life, as compared with earlier work, earlier method, earlier procedure, and earlier life, which seems to imply an underlying law. — — — This law of tendency is, in general, that the depiction of the external, objective, carnal, precedes, in every form of expression of which we can have records, the consideration of the internal, the subjective, the spiritual. We go from shapes, and forms, and bulk, and externals, to the presentation of the life within.’ Now the growth of the ‘novel of personality’ towards a closer representation of the ‘life within’ does not show any remarkable progress during the second decade of the century which, on the contrary, is marked by the rapid rise of the historical novel. It is no wonder that the depth and intensity with which the inner life is depicted in Maturin’s Women, should make a powerful impression upon thoughtful minds, though on the part of the larger public the book met with the usual fate of a work in advance of its time.—
While Zaira is well-nigh breaking down under the inconstancy of De Courcy, her daughter is, in Dublin, pining away from the same cause. In the Wentworth family things are going on in the same old style, Eva only is able to take less and less part in the usual proceedings. The symptoms of her disease manifest themselves in a general weakness, alarmingly increasing. Physicians are duly consulted—sea-air is recommended by one, mountain-air by another. Eva submits to all with a passive smile; she has not the least doubt that she is hastening to her grave. Soon, indeed, this becomes evident to the rest of the family, and Wentworth already plans what evangelical institutions might be supported by the fortune which will probably fall to him after Eva’s death, that is, the capital settled on her by her grandfather. A little incident exposing, in a masterly way, the inmost characters of the principal members of the circle, is related in connection with a meeting where Macowen is requested to give a ‘word of prayer.’ This gentleman, who also has been thwarted in love, deems this a suitable opportunity of taking his revenge, and exercises his eloquence entirely at the expense of Eva:
—he implored the mercy of Heaven for a wanderer who had strayed from the fold; for one “who had forsaken the guide of her youth, and forgotten the Covenant of her God; who had loved strangers, and after them would go.” And as he went on, aided by the sympathising murmur of the audience, his memory supplying him with images, and his passions with eloquence, there was not a single metaphor in the Old Testament descriptive of the apostacy of the Jews from their God, that he did not apply to Eva, who, compelled to kneel out this martyrdom, wished to sink into the earth to escape it. This cruel holding her up as an object to a numerous circle, was the most painful trial she had yet experienced. Wentworth thought it excellent, and expressed much hope from the strivings of that godly man in her behalf. Mrs. Wentworth thought very differently; her feelings were so much outraged, she could hardly remain on her knees; and when her husband soon after proposed Macowen to be of a party that was to meet at their house, Mrs. Wentworth strenuously declared, “He should not come into their city, nor shoot an arrow there.” And Wentworth was not displeased with her opposition to his wishes, because it was couched in the language of Isaiah, whom Macowen had taught him to call the fifth evangelist.
One evening as Eva is sitting in her garden, De Courcy appears before her; she swoons in his arms and, from that moment, does not leave her bed. He besieges Mrs. Wentworth with letters and supplications, but is no more admitted to Eva, whose only wish is to die in peace. It is not without much exertion of her feeble strength that she succeeds in repelling the image of her lover from her thoughts and fixing them on religion alone, yet at length she attains the tranquillity which Zaira had sought in vain, and her last moments are undisturbed by any earthly memories. The pitiable state into which De Courcy is reduced is spoken of in a tone evincing the author’s latent sympathy for him, but he forbears to give any detailed relation of the end of his hero: a character like De Courcy is interesting only in hours of happiness and enthusiasm. And as a crowning touch of the knowledge of the conditions of human nature displayed in Maturin’s Women must be mentioned the circumstance that Zaira remains alive. She is strong, having never been accustomed to self-indulgence. At an age when Eva and Charles knew no external compulsion, but were free to follow the dictates of their feelings, Zaira was placed face to face with real life in its sternest aspect, and the strenuous work into which she was driven, has, while she has had strength to go through it at all, hardened her vitality so that death touches her not when it would be most welcome. She lives on in the painful consciousness of having caused the death of her child, unknown and unnoticed. The book ends with this melancholy aphorism:
When great talents are combined with calamity, their union forms the tenth wave of human suffering—grief becomes inexhaustible from the unhappy fertility of genius, and the serpents that devour us, are generated out of our own vitals.
Women is, in conception as well as in execution, the most original of Maturin’s novels. What literary reminiscences there may be discerned—and these are but of a superficial character—lead, for the most part, back to his own work. It has already been said that his second book, The Wild Irish Boy, contains scenes and personages that anticipate certain things in the present work. The hero there was not unlike De Courcy; his affections would hover between a brilliant mother and a pale and delicate daughter; his friend Hammond was a very distinct prototype of Montgomery. Hammond approves of Lady Montrevor as little as Montgomery does of Zaira, and he also is anxious to detect something condemnable in the opinions and conversation of the remarkable woman who has bewitched his friend. The imperfectly sketched characters and the clumsy composition of The Wild Irish Boy are of little interest in themselves, but they clearly show the enormous advance of Maturin’s powers after the success of Bertram. In Zaira critics were inclined to see an imitation—hostile reviewers said a caricature—of M:me de Staël’s Corinne. Scott writes: ‘We have — — — — hinted at some of the author’s errors; and we must now, in all candour and respect, mention one of considerable importance, which the reader has perhaps anticipated. It respects the resemblance betwixt the character and fate of Zaira and Corinne—a coincidence so near, as certainly to deprive Mr. Maturin of all claim to originality, so far as this brilliant and well-painted character is concerned. In her accomplishments, in her beauty, in her talents, in her falling a victim to the passion of a fickle lover, Zaira closely resembles her distinguished prototype.’ All this is true, yet the most essential point of contact between the two characters is left unmentioned. The type was one that had occupied Maturin’s imagination long before he wrote Women; it might with as much reason be asserted that the accomplishments and outward appearance of Armida in The Milesian Chief were borrowed from Corinne (1807). But one trait in Zaira, which, in all probability, was directly influenced by M:me de Staël, is her sweetness of temper and lack of pride—a quality which excludes from the descriptions of her suffering the ‘frenetical’ element Maturin’s earlier writings were noted for. Otherwise the figure of Corinne, though depicted in a calmer style, is much more exaggerated than Zaira: the latter is only a celebrated actress—and a very learned woman certainly; while Corinne is, in addition to this, a gifted painter, an eminent poetess, and a national heroine. Of the external circumstances of Corinne’s destiny several can be pointed out which, no doubt, have their analogies in Women—the mystery that covers her early life before she rises to the height of fame; the unhappy issue of her attachment to a man unworthy of her, and the final loss of her great talents. What, however, there is most remarkable in the history of Zaira, the minute analysis of the progress of her sufferings, that, in short, which Watts holds forth so eloquently, has no parallel in the book of M:me de Staël who is content only to state the result of the mental struggles her heroine undergoes. Corinne is not a novel in the same sense as Women; its weight lies neither in incident nor psychology, but in its broad-minded raisonnement about life and literature in the European countries of the time. The characters are subjected to a quite conventional treatment, and it is curious to see how closely the death of Corinne resembles the death of Eva, though nobody ever thought of accusing Maturin of imitation in this respect. The observation which Maturin makes with reference to Zaira, M:me de Staël applies to Corinne: ‘Quand une personne de génie est douée d’une sensibilité véritable, ses chagrins se multiplient par ses facultés mêmes: elle fait des découvertes dans sa propre peine comme dans le reste de la nature; et, le malheur du coeur étant inépuisable, plus on a d’idées, mieux on le sent;’—but nevertheless she succeeds in finding the harmony of mind which is the natural inheritance of Eva. She fixes her thoughts on religion alone, and, decidedly refusing to see her lover or answer his letters, declares her only wish to be to die in peace:—‘au moment de mourir Dieu m’a fait la grâce de retrouver du calme, et je sens que la vue d’Oswald remplirait mon âme de sentiments qui ne s’accordent point avec les angoisses de la mort. La religion seule a des secrets pour ce terrible passage.’ Maturin, on the other hand, does not shrink from drawing the extreme conclusions from his definition, and shows with a merciless consistency that she who was born a Zaira can never become an Eva.
The originality of yet another personage in Women was disputed, in so far as some critics maintained Zaira’s mother to be a copy of Meg Merrilies in Guy Mannering (1815). This romantic creation of Scott—a spinner of intrigues in the shape of an old hag of wild manners and questionable sanity—variations of which reappear in several of the Waverley novels, was very likely to attract a novelist of Maturin’s temperament and may have had some share in the origin of the old Irishwoman. There is, however, this great difference, that Meg is more of a type, the Irishwoman more of an individual. The former, who admirably succeeds in her plans, is a schemer by profession, a gipsy and the leader of a whole tribe; the latter has become what she is through a series of personal calamities, and completely fails in the fantastic aim which she is pursuing: she dies in misery without having converted any of her descendants.—Zaira’s mother is the only person in the book who is demonstratively Irish, a representative of the lower classes. The description of her appearance is impressive, even terrible:
She was a frightful and almost supernatural object; her figure was low, and she was evidently very old, but her muscular strength and activity were so great, that, combined with the fantastic wildness of her motions, it gave them the appearance of the gambols of a hideous fairy. She was in rags, yet their arrangement had something of a picturesque effect. Her short tattered petticoats, of all colours, and of various lengths, depending of angular shreds, her red cloak hanging on her back, and displaying her bare bony arms, with hands whose veins were like ropes, and fingers like talons; her naked feet, with which, when she moved, she stamped, jumped, and beat the earth like an Indian squaw in a war-dance; her face tattooed with the deepest indentings of time, want, wretchedness, and evil passions; her wrinkles, that looked like channels of streams long flowed away; the eager motion with which she shook back her long matted hair, that looked like strings of the grey bark of the ash tree, while eyes flashed through them whose light seemed the posthumous offspring of deceased humanity,—her whole appearance, gestures, voice, and dress, made De Courcy’s blood run cold within him.
A certain ‘picturesque effect,’ intended as a token of her nationality, is carefully preserved in all her sayings and doings, but never emphasized so as to make her attractive in any way. Maturin, as has been seen, was not fond of idealizing the Irish people, and the street-types occurring in Women form no exception to the rule. Otherwise Women is a psychological novel without any national tendency, notwithstanding a few patriotic sentences and political allusions to the unfortunate state of the country. Nor is there anything peculiarly Irish in the principal events of the book, except in Zaira’s early history, which gives a glimpse of the primitive and unregulated life led on a remote Irish estate at that period. As this part, however, supplies the groundwork for the whole fabric, Allan Cunningham[108] is not entirely wrong in calling Women ‘an Irish story, wild, wonderful, and savage, with many redeeming touches of pathos and beauty.’—Amidst all the realism of the book, an incident with something of a supernatural import is unexpectedly introduced; whether this be a characteristically Irish trait or no, a study of Maturin must take account of it. It is told that on a pleasure-party, at the time when the intimacy between Zaira and De Courcy is ripening into love, he twice sees the apparition of Eva, which remains unseen by others; and Eva, on the same afternoon, in a dream imagines herself in exactly the same situation in which she appears to De Courcy. This incident, mentioned in a few words but with a remarkable seriousness, caused Scott, in his critique on Women, to refer to and quote the suppressed passages of Bertram.—