“It is a great pity that the heroine ever set forth on such a foolish errand; she has only harmed herself and her cause (as a bad advocate always will) and had much better have remained at home pudding-making or stocking-mending, than have meddled with what she understands so ill.
“In the first place (we speak it with due respect for the sex) she is guilty of a fault which is somewhat too common among them; and having very little, except prejudice, on which to found an opinion, she makes up for want of argument by a wonderful fluency of abuse. A woman’s religion is chiefly that of the heart, and not of the head. She goes through, for the most part, no dreadful stages of doubt, no changes of faith: she loves God as she loves her husband by a kind of instinctive devotion. Faith is a passion with her, not a calculation; so that, in the faculty of believing, though they far exceed the other sex, in the power of convincing they fall far short of them.”[12]
More than one woman writer has risen, of later years, triumphantly to confute any such complacent masculine superiority; but it must be admitted that Mrs. Trollope is scarcely judicial in the venom she pours out so eloquently upon the head of her “Vicar,” his worshippers, and his accomplices. This was not quite the direction in which women could most wisely develop the domestic novel in her day; while they still—like the Brontës, but in a spirit quite alien to Jane Austen’s—upheld “that manly passion for superiority which leads our masters to covet in a companion chosen for life ... that species of weakness which is often said to be the most attractive feature in the female character.” It is, again, a curious want of taste which allows her to dwell upon the pleasure experienced by a comparatively respectable young man in making a little girl of eight tipsy—though he is the Vicar’s son.
But, on the other hand, there is considerable power and much sprightly humour in the story. Mrs. Trollope’s good (i.e. orthodox) people are really delightful, and admirably characterised. The genuine piety of Rosalind, the Irish heiress, is most artistically united to graceful vivacity and natural charm: the testy Sir Gilbert is perfectly matched with Lady Harrington: and the three young Mowbrays are drawn from life. The study of Henrietta Cartwright, driven to atheism by the hypocrisy of her horrible father, has all the force of a real human tragedy; and, if the villainy of Evangelicism is exaggerated, it is painted with graphic humour. She works from nature, and finds excellent “copy” in the parish.
Mrs. Trollope, in fact, has left us proof in abundance that women had learnt to “write with ease”; if, in her case, over-production and misplaced zeal have led to an abuse of her talents.
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), “Queen of philanthropists,” has left a stamp of almost passionate sincerity on everything she wrote. From earliest days she declared that her “chief subordinate object in life was the cultivation of her intellectual powers, with a view to the instruction of others by her writings.” Believing herself the servant of humanity, she sought to save souls by the diffusion of a little knowledge.
Inevitably, under such influence, her work was always didactic; whether inspired by the orthodox faith of her earlier years or the Atkinson-interpretation of Comte she afterwards espoused: whether directed towards social reform, or expressed in narrative and biography. The greater number of her publications, whether or no actually written for the press, contain those qualities which make the best journalism; and, though occasionally capricious and “superior” in private judgment, her brief critical biographies, from the Daily News, are masterpieces in the vignette. She knew “everybody” in her day; and contributed much to the thirst for “information,” reasonably applied, which characterised our grandfathers.
But, as a novelist, she has two special claims to notice. Her “Playfellow Series” (embracing Feats on the Fiord, The Crofton Boys, and The Peasant and the Prince) are living to-day among the few priceless inherited treasures of literature. Less obviously didactic than the Edgeworth “nursery classics,” they have certain similar characteristics of spontaneity, sympathetic understanding, and simple directness. Each occupied with quite different subjects, they are informed by the same spirit, excite the same kind of pleasure, and—for all their decided, but not obtrusive, moralising—appeal to the same healthy taste. By those to whom their life-like young people have been among the chosen friends of childhood, the memories will never fade.
Miss Martineau’s adult narratives have less distinction; although her Hour and the Man is a creditable effort in the historic form, and Deerbrook has much emotional power. To our taste the tone of the latter must be criticised for its somewhat sensational religiosity, and for the priggish perfection of its “white” characters. But, on the other hand, there is subtlety in contrasts among the “undesirables”; genuine pathos in, for example, the description of Mrs. Enderby’s death; and plenty of artistic “interest” in the plot: nor can we neglect mention of the remarkable portrait of Morris, the servant and most real friend to her “young ladies.”