Art, inspired by a sense of duty, need not detain us further.
Mrs. Craik (1826-1887) belongs, in all essentials, to the modern school of novelists; although (like many another of her day) she appears almost more out-of-date than the women of genius who preceded her. For the “average” writers belong to one age and only one. Yet the enormous mass of work she produced may still be read with some pleasure, and deserves notice for its competent witness to certain phases of development in women’s work.
In the first place she practically invented the “novel for the young person” (which is not “a children’s story”); and, in the second, she carried to its extreme limit that enthusiasm for domestic sentimentality (which is quite different from “sensibility”) so dear to the Early Victorians.
Obviously it can be no matter for surprise that, as women became accustomed to the use of their pen and experienced in its influence, they should wake at last to the peculiar needs of their daughters—for a class of story which, without the false ideals of romance or the coarseness of early fiction, was in itself thoroughly interesting and absorbing. We have seen that, in purifying the novel, our greatest women-novelists were, for the most part, content to practise their art as an art. Jane Austen, undoubtedly, is a peculiarly wholesome writer (and therefore an influence for good); but she had no direct moral purpose. And the didactic elements in Miss Edgeworth, Hannah More, and Harriet Martineau are somewhat inartistically pronounced.
In Mrs. Craik’s day the desire for improvement was phenomenally active and varied. She was “conscious” of this particular opening (afterwards expressed and developed by Miss Yonge), and, in her own manner, prepared to meet it. It is impossible not to recognise that the whole appeal of John Halifax, Gentleman is directed towards youth. The feminine idealism, whether applied to men or women, embraces all the vague and innocent dreams of heroic virtue which belong to the dawn of life. The supreme domination of family life, the education “at home” for boys and girls alike, and a thousand other minutiæ of feeling and opinion, are designed for that period—possibly the most important in character-training—before experience has tested the will. There is no shirking of truth, the method is realistic; and we must recognise the value of an atmosphere so refined and purified, yet manly and practical. For John Halifax is always a fighter, one who makes his own way—without sacrifice of principle or losing his sympathy with the less capable, and less fortunate, among the sons of toil.
John Halifax may fairly be taken as “standing” for Mrs. Craik. Here and in other novels (numbering about fifty) we may read her message, understand the Early Victorian lady, and observe one groove along which the woman-novelist was destined to work with comparative independence. From revealing themselves, they have turned (as had Charlotte Brontë with very different results) to give away their ideal of manhood.
Mrs. Oliphant (1828-1897) belongs to the same group of thoroughly efficient Victorian novelists as Mrs. Craik. Living to an old age she produced nearly a hundred volumes, all witnessing the scope and power which had now been accepted in women’s work. Her output is far more varied than Mrs. Craik’s—bolder, more humorous, and less sentimental. She published some admirable history, a notable record of the Blackwoods—involving expert, if rather emotional, criticism—and dabbled in the Unseen. Having great sympathy with the Scotch temperament, she also imparted a more modern tone to the “national” novel, somewhat after Galt’s manner.
In her work also we find, very definitely, the “note” of protest. Those truly feminine young ladies (a Jane Austen pair), the daughters of the Curate-in-Charge, for example, are perpetually in revolt against convention. Mab, the artist, suffers from a governess who considers drawing “unladylike,” and believes that “a young lady who respects herself, and who has been brought up as she ought, never looks at gentlemen: There are drawings of gentlemen in that book. Is that nice, do you suppose?”[14] The practical Cicely shoulders the family burdens; and is promptly “cut” by her friends, because she takes up the post of village schoolmistress. Like “John Halifax” she had been compelled to face life (for others as well as herself) with absolutely nothing but “her head and her hands.” With less fuss she made an equally good fight, with no encouragement from that proud and tender-hearted old gentleman, her father, whose one idea of happiness was to “fall into our quiet way again.” He “felt it was quite natural his girls should come home and keep house for him, and take the trouble of the little boys, and visit the schools: How is a man like that to be distinguished from a Dissenting preacher?” To them it still seems: “We cannot go and do things like you men, and we feel all the sharper, all the keener, because we cannot do.”