Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
I have to thank the editor and publisher of _The Athenæum_ for permission to reprint the chapter on “Parallel Passages”; the editor and publisher of _The Gownsman_ for permission to use “A Study in Fine Art”; Professor Gollancz and Messrs. Chatto & Windus for permission to rep...
I have to thank the editor and publisher of _The Athenæum_ for permission to reprint the chapter on “Parallel Passages”; the editor and publisher of _The Gownsman_ for permissio...
2. Part 2We are not justified, on the other hand, in supposing that a heroine should only exhibit sensibility on some real emotional catastrophe. There was a tendency, we have observed,...
3. Part 3“In goodness of heart, and in principles of piety, this exemplary couple were bound to each other by the most perfect union of character, though in their tempers there was a con...
4. Part 4I cannot myself, however, entirely avoid the impression that, in their natural desire for classification, the critics have laid undue stress on Mrs. Radcliffe’s use of Mystery....
5. Part 5“Here, therefore, we have two essential and important circumstances, in which the earlier novels differed from those now in fashion, and were more nearly assimilated to the old...
6. Part 6We have already noted the popularity of Emma, but, in this _unlike_ Elizabeth, she has her detractors. Some find her too managing, self-centred, and “superior” for charm. Admitt...
7. Part 7It would be difficult, if not impossible, to name an author of genius even approximately equal to Jane Austen’s who owed so little as she to any deliberate study of literary mod...
8. Part 8“I do not recollect ever to have seen the sudden transition of a high-bred English beauty, who thinks she can sacrifice all for love, to an uncomfortable, solitary, Highland dwe...
9. Part 9In fact, the artistic achievement of _Cranford_ is the creation of an atmosphere. Like the authors of _Evelina_ and of _Emma_, Mrs. Gaskell is frankly feminine, and not superior...
10. Part 10Passing to modern criticism, we find one writer declaring that Rochester’s character “belongs to the realm of the railway bookstall shilling novel,” while to another it seems “o...
11. Part 11_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’...
12. Part 12But what was fearlessly urged on a few chosen topics from the Haworth parsonage became the foreground and main subject with the assistant editor of the _Westminster Review_. We...
13. Part 13We 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 tempe...
14. Part 14Tom Tulliver’s whole relationship with his sister is an admirable study in the conventional notion of a stupid man’s “superiority” to a clever woman; but it cannot be criticised...
15. Part 15The character of Charlotte Brontë, like her work, brings us at once into a new atmosphere. All here is emotionally strenuous, if not melodramatic. The bleak parsonage, the stern...
16. Part 16Austen, Jane, 17, 52, 55, 66-116, 117-30, 140, 152, 155, 156, 164, 166, 170, 172, 189, 207, 209, 211, 213, 219, 227-9, 231-3, 235, 237, 238-42, 244, 248, 250-2, 255, 268-75, 276...