The women novelists

Emily Brontë (1818-1848) can scarcely, in character or genius, be accommodated to any ordered consideration of development. Regarded by many enthusiasts as greater than her more famous sister, she stands alone for all time. Her one novel, Wuthering Heights, is unique for the passionate intensity of its emotions and the wild dreariness of its atmosphere. Save for the clumsily introduced stranger, who merely exists to “hear the story,” the entire plot is woven about seven characters, all save one nearly related, and a few servants.

“Mr. Heathcliff,” said the second Catherine, “you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery. You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you—nobody will cry for you when you die! I wouldn’t be you!”

Charlotte calls him “child neither of Lascar nor gipsy, but a man’s shape animated by demon life—a Ghoul—an afreet”; and “from the time when ‘the little black-haired swarthy thing, as dark as if it came from the Devil,’ was first unrolled out of the bundle and set on its feet in the farm-house kitchen, to the hour when Nelly Dean found the grim, stalwart corpse laid on its back on the panel-enclosed bed, with wide-gazing eyes that seemed to ‘sneer at her attempt to close them, and parted lips and sharp white teeth that sneered too,’” this human monster dominates every character and event in the whole book. Men and women, Linton or Earnshaw, are but pawns in his remorseless brain; thwarting his will, daring his anger time after time; yet always submitting at last to the will of their “master”: save, indeed, at the fall of the curtain, when he had “lost the faculty of enjoying destruction.” For the passion of Heathcliff’s strange existence is gloomy revenge—against fate and his own associates. Bitterly concentrated on the few human beings—all occupying two adjacent farms—with whom his life is passed, he seems the embodiment of an eternal curse, directed to thwart every natural feeling, every hope of happiness or peace.

Emily Brontë reveals no conception of humanity save this fiendish misanthrope; churlish boors like Hindley and Hareton Earnshaw; weak good people like Edgar, Isabella, and Linton; passionate sprites like the two Catherines. Old Joseph indeed contains some elements of the comic spirit, exhibited in hypocrisy; and Nelly Dean alone has both virtue and strength of character. But in making, or striving to unmake, marriages between these “opposites”; in forcing their society upon each other, and hovering around his helpless victims; the arch-fiend Heathcliff has ample scope for the indulgence of his diabolical whim. The tormenting of others and of himself; the perverse making of misery for its own sake; the ingenious exercise of brutal tyranny, are food and drink to this twisted soul. In ordinary cases we should wonder what might have happened had Catherine married him. We should set about picturing Heathcliff in happy possession of the love for which he craved so mightily: we should have murmured, “What cruel waste.” But the power of Emily Brontë’s conception denies us such idle imaginings. Heathcliff was manifestly incapable of “satisfaction” in anything, and there, as elsewhere, was Catherine his true mate. No circumstances, the most roseate or ideal, could have tamed his savage nature, quieted his stormy discontents, or lulled his passion for hurting all creatures weaker than himself. Such love as his must always have crushed and devoured what it yearned for: he could never have had enough of it: have rested in it, or rested upon it. He was, indeed, possessed by the “eighth devil.”

In reality, then, the resemblance between Charlotte and Emily Brontë is comparatively superficial, arising from similarity of experience and the bleak atmosphere of the scenes and people among which they lived.[13] Emily can scarcely be called an exponent of human passion, since the beings she has created bear little or no resemblance to actual humanity.

Charlotte has told us that her sister’s impressions of scenery and locality are truthful, original, and sympathetic; the bleakness of the atmosphere is not exaggerated. But, on the other hand, we learn—as we should expect—that “she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry among whom she lived, than a nun has of the country people who sometimes pass her gates.... She knew their ways, their language, their family histories: she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but with them she rarely exchanged a word.” Hence, having a naturally sombre mind, she drank in only “those tragic and terrible traits of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress.”

For those characteristics, more or less superficial, in which her dramatis personæ resemble real life, they are drawn, with marvellous insight and sympathy, from the moorlands; but they are not, themselves, moorland folk. They are sheer creations of the imagination. The terrible possibilities which lurk within us are used indeed in the compounding, but so combined and concentrated as to banish all human semblance. It is up to any of us to become such as Heathcliff and the rest, for she has not violated the possibilities; but a kinder fate, that grain of virtue and gentleness without which no human being was ever born and held his reason, has saved us from the absolutely elementary passions, tormenting and repining, of these strange beings.

She is as far from realism as an “unromantic” writer can well be; and, by sheer force of will or vividness of imagination, compels and fascinates us to accept, as worthy of study and full of interest, the characters she has created.

And because, as has been often noticed, women are—curiously enough—not usually pre-eminent in imagination, her work remains supreme for certain qualities, which we may vainly seek elsewhere in English literature.

Anne Brontë (1820-1849) sheds but a pale glimmer beside her fiery sisters. She produced two novels: Agnes Grey, the record of a governess, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a morbid picture of “talents misused and faculties abused”—both founded on personal experience. She worked quietly, but with mild resolution; reproducing exactly her own observations on life, never straying beyond what she believed to be literally the truth. “She hated her work, but would pursue it. When reasoned with on the subject, she regarded such reasonings as a temptation to self-indulgence. She must be honest: she must not varnish, soften, or conceal.”

Anne Brontë has left us her “warning”; and if the stories embodying the moral are not particularly stimulating or dramatic, they do, after a painstaking fashion, reveal character and reflect life. She had, moreover, a mild humour, entirely denied to Charlotte or Emily, as the following description of an “unchristian” rector may serve to show:

Like Charlotte, she prefers a plain heroine, seeming almost jealous of beauty in others, and regards man as the natural “master” of woman.

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.”

It is doubtful if women had ever been less conscious of their limitations, or less dissatisfied with them; but the definite expression of criticism arose at this period, because they were acquiring the habit of expressing themselves, and had glimpses of possible change. From Charlotte Brontë, women not only pictured life from a feminine standpoint, but discussed and criticised it—a movement which “found itself” in George Eliot.

Mrs. Oliphant still speaks, and thinks, consciously, as a woman. But she does not “accept” everything. As to the craftmanship of fiction, we may now assume it for women, as had the public. We are reaching, indeed, the time when her province is no longer to stand aside. The later writers speak as individuals among artists, not as part of a group or school.

As mentioned above, Mrs. Oliphant also wrote competent criticism and played the part, still comparatively novel among women, of an all-round practical journalist, knowing the world of letters, familiar with publishers and the “business” of authorship, handling history or biography like a person of culture. In her later years she essayed, in The Beleaguered City and elsewhere, some way into that field of psychic inquiry—developed by her son Laurence—and since their day a familiar topic in fiction.

At one time, indeed, greater things were expected of her. The Chronicles of Carlingford (1863) approach genius. They appeared after Adam Bede, and it is scarcely surprising that men imagined the discovery of a second George Eliot. We find in them that almost masculine insight—from an intellectual eminence—of parochial affairs, small society, and the country town, combined with passionate character-analysis, emotional philosophy, and bracing humour, which constituted the individuality of George Eliot.

Mrs. Oliphant, in her early days, produced several “Chronicles,” in which the characters reappear, though diversely centralised; and we may consider two examples at some length.

Miss Marjoribanks, following the woman’s lead, is professedly a study in a certain feminine type. The heroine was known among her schoolfellows as “a large girl.”

After which unconventional description, we are not surprised to learn that our heroine “was possessed by nature of that kind of egotism, or rather egoism, which is predestined to impress itself, by its perfect reality and good faith, upon the surrounding world.... This conviction of the importance and value of her own proceedings made Lucilla, as she grew older, a copious and amusing conversationalist—a rank which few people who are indifferent to, or do not believe in, themselves can attain to.”

Miss Marjoribanks had two objects in life—to “be a comfort to” her widowed father and “to revolutionise society.” Undoubtedly she “made” Carlingford, and, though her father was perfectly satisfied with his own management of life, she did actually succeed in proving herself essential to his well-being. A young woman who, on her own showing, “never made mistakes” and was “different” from other ladies, was able to effect much with the “very good elements” of Carlingford. She created a social atmosphere of peculiar distinction, she managed the most intractable of archdeacons, she found “the right man” to represent the borough. She was as fearless as, and far more successful than, Miss Woodhouse, in making marriages; and in every respect went her own way with a most engaging self-confidence. Dr. Marjoribanks respected and “understood” her, though he thought her more “worldly” than she proved herself; and no one gave her full credit “for that perfect truthfulness which it was her luck always to be able to maintain.”

The character is worth our study; for it is improbable that fiction has ever produced, or will ever venture to repeat, a heroine so entirely convinced of a mission in life, and so competent to carry it out. Scarcely ever concerned with sentiment, she had a genius for doing “the right thing,” and thoroughly enjoying the contemplation of her own achievements. Yet she was really generous and kind-hearted, entirely above jealousy or meanness. We may question, perhaps, whether any woman, or man either, was ever quite so consistent: since even in yielding to Cousin Tom’s importunities, she was but planning a new campaign—“to carry light and progress” into “the County.” Yet few readers will fail to recognise the power and charm of Lucilla Marjoribanks—a new revelation of what a woman conceives woman may be.

In all her dialogue, in the narrative, and in the minor characterisation, Mrs. Oliphant here proves herself an easy master of convincing realism. We know Carlingford and its inhabitants as intimately as our native town.

Salem Chapel, indeed, reveals another side of the picture. Miss Marjoribanks and her friends were staunch church people. The sturdy deacons, their women-folk, and Mr. Vincent’s whole flock, belong to another sphere. “Greengrocers, dealers in cheese and bacon, milkmen, with some dressmakers of inferior pretensions, and teachers of day schools of similar humble character, formed the élite of the congregation.” Indeed, “the young man from ’Omerton” proves to be something of a firebrand among these simple souls. His declaration of independence does not meet with their approval: “Them ain’t the sentiments for a pastor in our connection. That’s a style of thing as may do among fine folks, or in the church where there’s no freedom; but them as chooses their own pastor, and don’t spare no pains to make him comfortable, has a right to expect different.” Since the poor fellow is “getting his livin’ off them all the time,” he must go their way without question: “A minister ain’t got no right to have business of his own, leastways on Sundays. Preaching’s his business.” The most loyal of them can always recall “that period of delightful excitation when they were hearing candidates, and felt themselves the dispensers of patronage”; though, as the caustic Adelaide truthfully remarked, “even when they are asses like your Salem people, you know they like a man with brains”; and Mr. Vincent had “filled the chapel.”

Mrs. Oliphant has contrasted the limitations of Dissent with a somewhat melodramatic personal tragedy which insensibly draws Mr. Vincent under the influence of “them great ladies” who “when they’re pretty-looking” are “no better nor evil spirits,” and, alas, “a minister of our connection as was well acquainted with them sort of folks would be out of nature.” The whole atmosphere is obviously uncongenial, and we see that it makes the man totally unfit for his work.

Nevertheless, it is with two characters wholly “within the fold” that our sympathies must finally remain. It is Mrs. Vincent and Tozer the Butterman who are the real hero and heroine. Certainly the gentle widow cannot understand her clever son, and her absolute lack of common sense is quite exasperating; but everyone recognises that she is “quite the lady,” and no Roman mother of classic immortality ever revealed such perfect loyalty under such tragic difficulties. She knew “how little a thing makes mischief in a congregation,” for “she had been a minister’s wife for thirty years,” and her superb devotion to doing the right thing by everybody conquered persons of far greater intellect and assurance, under difficulties that few men could have faced for any consideration. Again and again this quiet and most provokingly fussy of women absolutely dominates the stage, conquering all adversaries. She is almost absurdly inadequate for the “realities” of life; but such a past mistress of tact and decorum, so instinctively aware of “what is expected of her,” and so courageously punctilious in manner, that she triumphs over odds the most overwhelming, proving inflexible where she knows her ground. Entirely without control over her emotions, she yet never forgets or fails in her “duty.”

The heroism of Mr. Tozer, naturally, does not depend upon such subtleties or refinements. He is of sterner stuff; but it would be hard to find, in life or fiction, a zealous deacon, so thoroughly conversant with the duties and the privileges of his position, who could rise with such broad-minded charity to circumstances so exceptional. He is genuinely kind, and really loyal to Mr. Vincent. Without the slightest knowledge, or any power to appreciate the emotional turmoil which had thrown that young minister off his balance, the worthy shopkeeper trusts his own instincts, fights like a hero for his friend, and absolutely pulverises the enemy. He has no natural gifts for eloquence, no diplomacy or tact; but he has faith, insight, and courage.

The minister’s wife and the deacon entirely remove the reproach we might otherwise level against Mrs. Oliphant of satirical contempt for Nonconformity. With Miss Marjoribanks, they establish her power in characterisation.

Finally, the crowded picture of life at Carlingford given in the two novels prepares us for that conscious and professional study of “material” for fiction which women had only recently acquired, and which bears its finest fruit in George Eliot.

Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901) presents almost as many facets as Mrs. Oliphant, but her work more nearly resembles Mrs. Craik’s. Primarily a High-Churchwoman and a sentimentalist, she was more directly educational than either. Her Cameos of English History are models of popular narrative, a little coloured by prejudice; but no praise can be too high for that children’s story, also historical, The Little Duke, or for the equally charming The Lances of Lynwood.

As a novelist she was chiefly concerned, as hinted already, with the conscious development of the tale “for the young person,” which she defines and justifies in her

As it happens, this passage contains several points which serve to elucidate the special characteristics of its author’s work. We see at once the serious moral purpose, and its direct aim. We may notice, again, that she at least recognises, and admits, what may be called disparagingly the chief function of women novelists—the narration of “Family Chronicles,” the domesticity, the emphasis on “home” life. And, finally, we have a confession of her tendency to overcrowd the characters; her devotion for persons to whom the reader has been already introduced, now reappearing—for further development—in another tale.

Miss Yonge, in fact, had a weakness for genealogy. One novel often describes the children of persons figuring in another. We may recognise old friends in every chapter. No doubt the habit may become wearisome, and it was carried to excess. But, on the other hand, we must be conscious of exceptional familiarity with “the May family,” for example; and the process, when restrained with discretion, is a perfectly legitimate application of the realistic ideal. In real life the plots are not rounded off in one volume. Reunions that are utterly unexpected, if not unwelcome, are constantly surprising us, and the children of friends or relatives have a natural bias towards each other.

Moreover, in this matter Miss Yonge reveals extraordinary skill. Technically, we could name the heroine of The Daisy Chain. She has several peculiarities, recalling Maggie Tulliver. But we are nearly as intimate with the two Margarets; the “worldly” sister is drawn with subtle command of detail; the innumerable brothers are perfectly differentiated; Dr. May stands out clear in every mood; the “heiress” is absolutely alive; and there is no hesitation about the minor characters. Miss Yonge can “manage” as many people as you please. There is no faltering or hesitation about her touch anywhere.

To-day, probably, we do not quite willingly accept so much religiosity. We certainly cannot “assume” the Church. Our “aspirations” may not expend themselves upon a steeple or a Sunday school. But there can be no question about this good lady’s understanding of young people. The family picture is sound and wholesome. No member of the group offends us by his or her sanctimonious perfection. All are perfectly human, youthfully impulsive, and wholesomely eager. And the Early Victorians were sentimental.

As in John Halifax, Gentleman, the atmosphere belongs to the dawn of life. The love-stories—of which, needless to say, we have several—are whole-hearted, without complexity. There is no juggling with right and wrong, no “questioning,” no element of sordidness.

Though we should alter a good deal, perhaps, in detail—of manner, thought, and ideal—it is difficult to see how work could be done better for the particular class of readers appealed to; who would, undoubtedly, actually prefer a crowd.

Once more, Miss Yonge is frankly feminine. She has established one more special function for women novelists, a legitimate offspring of the domestic realism which they followed from the first; a work almost impossible to man.