The difference in Jane Austen’s work is almost startling. She seems practically unaware of London; and it would be difficult to name any group of intelligent persons so absolutely indifferent to its gaieties, its activities, or its problems as the characters in all her novels. It may be that Lucy Steele could not so easily have caught Robert Ferrars elsewhere; but the few Town chapters in Sense and Sensibility only illustrate our contention as a whole, since the relations between all remain precisely the same as in the country, and practically everyone is delighted to “get away again.” The John Knightleys and the excellent Gardiners, indeed, live in London: but we only meet them away from home; and, after all, the one “suggestive” comment on town life is the “unexpected discovery” that people who “live over their business” were able to “mix with” the County.
Jane Austen’s familiars are all drawn from the most unpromising circle: those who live “just outside” small towns, have just enough to live on without working for it, are just sufficiently well-bred to marry into “the County,” just simple enough to welcome a few “superior” townspeople. Doctors, attorneys, and—of course—clergymen, are included, as well as officers, naval or military, retired or on promotion. Elizabeth’s “He is a gentleman, I am a gentleman’s daughter,” defines the enclosure. The men, presumably, have business to transact, affairs to arrange. They read the newspapers and talk politics—among themselves. But Miss Austen does not concern herself with these aspects of life. Her heroines are not so gay as Miss Burney’s; they are not so thoroughly “in the swim.” But her picture is similarly one of home life, varied by “visiting” and “receiving.” She describes the distribution of one family into several—by “suitable” marriages. One section of English society, at one period, in the home, is completely brought to life again.
Miss Brontë, even more thoroughly ignoring London, does not exhaustively represent any one class, and has, indeed, little concern with “manners.” Nevertheless, practically all her characters have “something to do.” They follow a profession, or own a factory. Clergymen are still largely in evidence, but education—in different forms—has come to the front, and, what is still more significant, some of her heroines have to work for their living. Wherefore, apart from the increased intensity of emotion, the external atmosphere is far more strenuous, and in Shirley we even find the dawn of a social problem, echoes of the early struggle between Capital and Labour. The pictures of school life, at home and abroad, do not merely reproduce facts, but cry out for improvements. The intimate knowledge of Continental conditions is, in itself, a new feature.
Finally, George Eliot extends the sphere of action in many directions. Maintaining the middle-class realism of Richardson, in her case largely concentrated on small-town tradesmen and farmers, she still avoids London, but embraces every “profession,” and approaches, by expert study for “copy,” the labourers and mechanics “discovered” by Victorian novelists. She travels lower and more widely than her predecessors for atmosphere. She does not confine herself, like them, to personal experience. In Felix Holt she deliberately arranges for the illustration of economic politics; in Daniel Deronda she opens a big “race” problem; in Romola she essays “historical” romance. The passionate emotional outbursts of Charlotte Brontë have become psychological analyses; “problems” of all sorts are discussed with philosophical composure and professional knowledge. Within her self-imposed limits, woman has covered the field.
For the revelation of womanhood, through the types chosen for heroines, we find that Miss Burney still idealises a form of “sensibility,” which does not exhibit much advance on the ethereal purity of the old-world romance. The difference, however, is important, since the type is studied from life, not created by the imagination. The essential features of this quality are susceptibility to the fine shades, delicate refinement, and an exalted ideal of love. It is itself thoroughly romantic, and separates heroines from ordinary mortals. Similar characteristics, if betrayed by men, may be attractive, but do not command respect.
Jane Austen, planting her challenge in the very title of her first novel, extols sense. Marianne, and—more subtly, perhaps—her mother, remain to secure our affection for a vanishing feminine grace; but, evidently, the type cannot survive the century. For, though few writers have actually said less about the rights of women or the problems of sex, no one has established with more undaunted conviction the progress to a new position. Gaily, and with well-assumed irresponsibility, brushing aside for ever “the advantages of folly in a pretty girl,” Jane assumes—with irresistible good humour—woman’s intellectual equality in everything that really matters. Catherine Morland is obviously a relic, conceived of parody; and Fanny Price was born at a disadvantage. Generally speaking, her heroines judge for themselves as a matter of course, and judge wisely. They even “judge for” the men. Their charm arises from mental independence.
Though to our modern notions their lives may seem empty enough, a thousand and one touches reveal advance on the eighteenth-century conception of “what is becoming to elegant females.” They demand rational occupation, common-sense culture, the right to express themselves. They fall in love at the dictate of their own hearts. They set the standard of fidelity. It is true that Colonel Brandon’s adopted daughter and Maria Bertram submit to convention, and that Lydia Bennet is let off more easily because Darcy had “patched up” the affair; but the feeling about purity is sound and clear—that is, feminine. The “sense of sin” experienced by Jane Fairfax may be a little strained, but we meet with no high-flown notions of self-sacrifice in Emma; Elizabeth encourages Darcy to an explanation; and women are no longer afraid of happiness. They have grown to recognise that their life is in their own hands, not in those of man; that it is largely in their own power to shape their own destiny; that they will be wise to create their own standard of conduct, to settle their own affairs. The ideal emerging is startlingly modern in essentials. Though the problems confronting us to-day have not arisen, we feel that Jane Austen’s young ladies could have faced them with equanimity, possibly with a more balanced judgment than our own. There is a hint, indeed, in Mansfield Park that the poor woman may one day triumph over her sisters of leisure; for are not Fanny, William, and even Susan, the only real “comforts” to their elders? Sir Thomas “saw repeated, and for ever repeated, reason to ... acknowledge the advantages of early hardship and discipline and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure.”
Curiously enough, Charlotte Brontë, while uttering the first feminine protest, seems to have slipped back somewhat on this question. Taking for text Anne Elliot’s claim that women love longer without hope or life, she demands, even for Shirley, a male “master.” The explanation of this attitude was partly temperament—since women of vigorous intellect always need a flesh and blood prophet (witness Harriet Martineau and George Eliot): and it arose partly from her individual circumstances. The men of her family were, in different ways, exasperatingly weak; the “strong” men of her native moorlands were naturally domineering: her imagination was stirred, and her mind trained, by the Belgian Professor, Monsieur Heger, who was her master—technically, and who—as we learn from independent testimony—always took a delight in scolding his pupils. We do not, to-day, admire the feminine footstool; nevertheless Charlotte Brontë’s heroines have strong individual character, and are much given to defying the world. The type will never become popular in fiction, it is too angular intellectually, and too discontented. The quality of physical plainness has been seldom adopted by novelists, male or female. But in Shirley Miss Brontë generously abandons many of her favourite ideals, for both heroines. The types are mixed here; and we must feel that had circumstances encouraged a larger output, we might be compelled to modify many of our conclusions. It remains a fact that the authoress of Jane Eyre and Villette does not stand in the direct line of progress: save that she introduces the awakening of women to serious topics, and proves them intent not merely on self-revelation, but on reform. Her central inspiration, however, is passion: which no woman had hitherto handled; which few have since so powerfully portrayed.
It is not easy, even if possible, to summarise the more complex, and much varied, ideals of womanhood exhibited by George Eliot. Each of her heroines is a study from life; and, by this time, women were not all created in one pattern. Again, we can scarcely say that she has given us a heroine in Adam Bede, whereas Middlemarch might claim to offer three. Maggie Tulliver shows little resemblance to Romola. Yet, undoubtedly, George Eliot had more conscious, and more definite, theories on women than any of her predecessors: she deliberately set out to expound and enforce them.
We are tempted, however, to conclude that her favourite ideal was self-sacrifice. Her outlook was inclined to be melancholy; and she introduces us to that struggle between temperament and circumstances which is the keynote of modern fiction, forming the problem novel. In Fanny Burney and Jane Austen the heroine was simply more refined, or more sensible, than her family; and the story was founded on this difference. In George Eliot each heroine has her own temperament and her own set of circumstances which create her own problem. Women are now no longer concerned only with manners and delicacy: they have entered into life as a whole. The central fact, which may be seen in the earliest women-writers, is now expressed and deliberately put forward—that their moral standard is higher than men’s, that they have been treated unfairly by the world. Charlotte Brontë had emphasised this protest on one question, George Eliot applies it everywhere.