Hence, in criticising a novel, it becomes important to examine the tendency of the work. We utterly repudiate the idea that a reviewer has nothing to do with the morality of a book. We reject the specious jargon to the contrary urged by the George Sand school. A novel should be something more than a mere piece of intellectual mechanism, because if not, it is injurious. There can be no medium. A fiction which does not do good does harm. There never was a romance written which had not its purpose, either open or concealed, from that of Waverley, which inculcated loyalty, to that of Oliver Twist, which teaches the brotherhood of man. Some novels are avowedly and insolently vicious; such are the Adventures of Faublas and the Memoirs of a Woman of Quality. Others, under the guise of philanthropy, sap every notion of right and duty: such are Martin the Foundling, Consuelo, et id omne genus. It is the novels of this last class which are the most deleterious; for, with much truth, they contain just enough poison to vitiate the whole mass. Chemists tell us that the smallest atom of putrid matter, if applied to the most gigantic body, will, in time, infect the whole: just so the grain of sophistry in Consuelo, admitting there is no more, in the end destroys all that the book contains of the beautiful and true. Said a lady in conversing on this subject: "I always find that people who read such books remember only what is bad in them." Her plain common sense hit the nail on the head, while transcendental folly hammered all around it in vain. We have spoken of Consuelo thus particularly because it is the best of its class: and of that enervating fiction we here record our deliberate opinion, that it will turn more than one foolish Miss into a strolling actress, under the insane and preposterous notion that it is her mission.
We do not say that art should be despised by the novelist; we only contend that it should not be polluted. We would have every novel a work of art, but the art should be employed on noble subjects, not on indifferent or disgraceful ones. If authors plead a mission to write, it must be to write that which will do good. A Raphael may boast of inspiration when he paints a Madonna, but not when his brush stoops to a Cyprian or a Satyr. The Pharisees of old prayed unctuously in the market-places: so the George Sands of our day boast of their superior insight into the beautiful and true. We doubt whether both are not impudent hypocrites.
The novel, which has proved the text to these remarks, belongs to a different, and, we hold, a better school. It originally appeared in Sharpe's London Magazine, and has just been republished by E. Littell & Co. Edith Kinnaird is a fiction which the most artistic mind will feel delight in perusing, yet one which the humblest will understand, and from which both may derive improvement. The heroine is neither a saint nor a fool, but a living woman; her sufferings spring from her errors, and are redeemed by her repentance: all is natural, beautiful, refreshing and noble. We rise from the perusal of such a fiction chastened and improved.
Instead of rendering its readers dissatisfied with themselves, with their lot in life, with society, with every thing, this novel makes them feel that life is a battle, yet that victory is sure to reward all who combat aright—that after the dust and heat of the struggle comes the repose of satisfied duty. Yet there is nothing didactic in the volume. Its influence upon the heart is like that of the dew of heaven, silent, gradual, imperceptible. Is not this a proof of its intrinsic merit?
Consuelo herself, as an ideal, is not more lovely than Edith Kinnaird, while the latter, in the eyes of truth, is infinitely the nobler woman. We hope to hear from the author again. Let us have more of such novels: there cannot be too many of them. How can noble and talented souls do more good than by furnishing the right kind of novels. Just as the old religious painters used to limn saints and Madonnas, let us now write works of artistic and moral fiction.
Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. Boston: William D. Ticknor & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
Few novels published within the last ten years have made so great a stir among readers of all classes as this. The Harpers have sold a vast number of their cheap reprint, and we have here to notice its appearance in the old duodecimo shape, with large type and white paper. That the work bears unmistakable marks of power and originality cannot be questioned, and in a limited range of characterization and description evinces sagacity and skill. The early portions of the novel are especially truthful and vivid. The description of the heroine's youthful life—the exact impression which is conveyed of the child's mind—the influences which went to modify her character—the scenes at the boarding-school—all have a distinctness of delineation which approaches reality itself. But when the authoress comes to deal with great passions, and represent morbid characters, we find that she is out of her element. The character of Rochester is the character of a mechanical monster. The authoress has no living idea of the kind of person she attempts to describe. She desires to represent a reckless man, made bad by circumstances, but retaining many marks of a noble character, and she fills his conversation with slang, makes him impudent and lustful, a rascal in every sense of the word, without the remotest idea of what true chivalric love for a woman means; and this mechanical automaton, whose every motion reveals that he moves not by vital powers but by springs and machinery, she makes her pure-minded heroine love and marry.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the morality of this part of the novel. The question resolves itself into a question of art, for we hold that truth of representation and morality of effect are identical. Immoral characters may be introduced into a book, and the effect be moral on the reader's mind, but a character which is both immoral and unnatural ever produces a pernicious effect. Now the authoress of Jane Eyre has drawn in Rochester an unnatural character, and she has done it from an ignorance of the inward condition of mind which immorality such as his either springs from or produces. The ruffian, with his fierce appetites and Satanic pride, his mistresses and his perjuries, his hard impudence and insulting sarcasms, she knows only verbally, so to speak. The words which describe such a character she interprets with her fancy, enlightened by a reminiscence of Childe Harold and the Corsair. The result is a compound of vulgar rascalities and impotent Byronics. Every person who interprets her description by a knowledge of what profligacy is, cannot fail to see that she is absurdly connecting certain virtues, of which she knows a good deal, with certain vices, of which she knows nothing. The coarseness of portions of the novel, consisting not so much in the vulgarity of Rochester's conversation as the naive description of some of his acts—his conduct for three weeks before his intended marriage, for instance, is also to be laid partly to the ignorance of the authoress of what ruffianism is, and partly to her ignorance of what love is. No woman who had ever truly loved could have mistaken so completely the Rochester type, or could have made her heroine love a man of proud, selfish, ungovernable appetites, which no sophistry can lift out of lust.
We accordingly think that if the innocent young ladies of our land lay a premium on profligacy, by marrying dissolute rakes for the honor of reforming them, à la Jane Eyre, their benevolence will be of questionable utility to the world. There is something romantic to every inexperienced female mind in the idea of pirates and debauchees, who have sentiment as well as slang, miseries as well as vices. Such gentlemen their imaginations are apt to survey under the light of the picturesque instead of under the light of conscience. Every poet and novelist who addresses them on this weak side is sure of getting a favorable hearing. Byron's popularity, as distinguished from his fame, was mainly owing to the felicity with which he supplied the current demand for romantic wickedness. The authoress of Jane Eyre is not a Byron, but a talented woman, who, in her own sphere of thought and observation, is eminently trustworthy and true, but out of it hardly rises above the conceptions of a boarding-school Miss in her teens. She appears to us a kind of strong-minded old maid, but with her strong-mindedness greatly modified by the presumption as well as the sentimentality of romantic humbug.
Novum Testamentum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi. Interpetre Theodora Beza. Philadelphia: Geo. S. Appleton.