Part 13

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.

The elementary truth which the women novelists revealed (and for which they were censured by masculine critics) was that women do fall in love without waiting to be wooed. George Eliot develops this into a declaration of feminine judgment on life and character. Woman is no longer man-made, man-taught, or man-led. The door is opened for her independence.

Finally, it must not be forgotten that--whether intentionally or by instinct concerned with the revelation of their own nature--the great women-writers have been always awake to the humour of life. One says continually that women _have_ no sense of humour; but this mistake arises from generalisings, where the true test can only be applied by discrimination. Nothing differs so widely between _individuals_ as the appreciation of humour; though it is true that much masculine wit, tending towards farce, appeals to few women.

In our “leading ladies” (here scarcely including Charlotte Brontë) we find peculiar power and extensive variety. Fanny Burney depends on an eye for comedy, Jane Austen on the humorous phrase, George Eliot on the study of wit.

In _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_ the comic effects are mostly produced by the sudden meeting of opposites; the gay, irresponsible exaggeration of types; the clash of circumstances. Dickens, consciously or unconsciously, borrowed much of his method from Fanny Burney. The characters of each have their allotted foible, their catch phrase, their moral label, which somehow delights and surprises us afresh, however expected, at each repetition. Those inherently uncongenial are forced into close contact, one exposing the other. Speaking roughly, this is the stage manner. Could we not fancy the speakers confronted, and imagine their expressions of mutual astonishment, there would be little fun in them. They are not always quite so comic to our eyes as in each other’s. Captain Mirvan needs Madame Duval as a foil; that egregious fop Lovel is always playing up to Mrs. Selwyn; and, if Miss Branghton does not herself see the humour of the inimitable Smith, she brings it out. In _Cecilia_, again, the guardians produce each other; the “Larolles” is never so happy as when expounding Mr. Meadows; Mr. Gosport requires an audience.

Miss Burney’s wit is the child of Society generated in a crowd; it savours of repartee. Although spontaneous and true to life, it does not flash out from the nature of things, but from deliberate arrangement. It has been sought and is found. The material is well chosen. The people are “put together” for our amusement.

Jane Austen has used, and refined, this method--as she has adapted everything from Miss Burney--in her earlier work. The titles--_Pride and Prejudice_, _Sense and Sensibility_--and the ideas behind them betray their own inspiration. Elizabeth Bennet, clearly, is _intended_ to strike fire from Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine; Mrs. Bennet would scarcely have seemed so funny to another husband. The “Burney” innocence of Catherine Morland tempts Isabella to extremes in knowing vulgarity; Mrs. Jennings cannot ruffle Lady Middleton.

But on her own account, and in her best moments, Miss Austen is far more subtle. Hers is an intimate humour, dependent on shades, not contrasts, of character. Even the more boisterous figures of fun, even Catherine’s ridiculous applications of Udolpho, are complete in themselves, needing no foil. Miss Austen possesses a humorous imagination, where Miss Burney could only observe. A mere list of her quaint characters would fill a chapter, and no one of them is only comic. They are human beings, not mere puppets set up to laugh at. Moreover, the humour of them is derived from the polished phrase. Generally a few words suffice, fit though few.

Most assuredly, on the other hand, Miss Austen does not depend for her humour upon her comic characters. To begin with, these are never dragged in for “relief,” they “belong to” the plotting; and in the second place, much of her most perfect satire arises from scenes in which they have no part. We have, for example, the dialogue on generosity between Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood; the paragraph about “natural folly in a beautiful girl”; Miss Bingley’s ideal for a ball; Harriet’s “most precious treasures”; Sir Thomas Bertram’s complacent pride in Fanny; Mary Musgrave’s anxiety about “the precedence that was her due”; with other incidents too numerous to mention.

The fact is that almost every sentence of Miss Austen’s is pointed with humour; the finished phrasing of her narrative and her descriptions are unrivalled in wit. There is no strain or distortion, no laboured antithesis or uncouth dialect: merely the light touch, the unerring instinct for the happy phrase. At times we can detect indignation behind the laughter: her scorn is often most biting, she indulges in cynicism. But, in the main, her object is plainly derisive: the sheer joy of merriment, the consolation of meeting folly with a gay heart. And analysis will prove that, in her opinion, hypocrisy and pose are the sins unforgivable, the only legitimate occasion of joy to the jester. Elizabeth may turn off her discomfiture with a joke, but in reality she is honest, and wise enough to know that Darcy is unassailable by reason of his good qualities.

The attributes Miss Austen ridicules are those she seriously despises or dislikes, however generously she often secures our affection for their possessors. Her “figures of fun” are not wholly despicable.

Attention has been drawn of late to a marked contrast between the French comedy of “social gesture”--which is entirely intellectual--and the whole-souled laughter of the English. Shakespeare’s comic “figures are not a criticism of life--no great English literature is that. It is a piece of life imaginatively realised. Falstaff is not judged, he is accepted. Dogberry is not offered as a fool to be ridiculed by his intellectual betters. We are not asked to deride him. We are asked to become part of his folly. Falstaff appeals to the Falstaff in ourselves. Dogberry is our common stupidity, enjoyed for the sake of the dear fool that is part of every man. Shakespeare’s laugh includes vice and folly in a humour which is the tolerance of Nature herself for all her works.... English laughter lives in good fellowship.”

Since Macaulay did not hesitate to compare Jane Austen with Shakespeare in one matter, we may repeat his audacity here. The definition, if definition it can be called, will surely apply to _Emma_ and _Pride and Prejudice_. They are “_pieces of life imaginatively realised_.” We laugh _with_ the eccentricities, not _at_ them. Properly speaking, Miss Austen is no satirist. She can amuse us without killing emotion.

As hinted already, Charlotte Brontë has neither humour nor wit. She takes life most seriously; and, in attempting a comic relief, becomes lumping or savage. The fact of her “Shirley” curates recognising, and enjoying, their own portraits may serve to measure the limit of her success. Such men could only enjoy the second-rate. Her satire against charity schools and Belgian pensionnats is mere spite.

We must pass on, therefore, to George Eliot, who certainly had wit, and was once acclaimed very humorous. Here, as elsewhere, our authoress appears to have gathered up the resources of her predecessors, developed them by study and culture, dressed them up in the language of the professional. The fact that the mechanism of her humour can be analysed, however, must prove its limitation. It is “worked in,” skilfully, but obviously. There is everywhere an “impression of highly-wrought sentences which are meant to arrest the reader’s attention and _warn him what he is to look for_ of tragedy, of humour, of philosophy.” The humour is obviously “composed” to heighten the tragic effect by contrast. In her earlier work, indeed, every form of elaboration in style was but “one sign of her overmastering emotion,” therefore “fitting and suitable”; but repetition made it tedious and mechanical. After a time we see through “the expression of a humorous fancy in a pedantic phrase; the reminiscence of a classical idiom applied to some everyday triviality; the slight exaggeration of verbiage which is to accentuate an aphorism ... moulded on the plaster casts of the schools.”

The fact is that humour, and even wit, flourish most happily in uncultured fields--for there is only one George Meredith. Yet, within her limitations, there is triumph for the genius of George Eliot. None can deny tribute to Mrs. Poyser, or the “Aunts” in _The Mill on the Floss_. That very severe study and applied observation, which kills spontaneity, lent her the power to excite tears and laughter. She has given us oddities as rugged as, and more various than, Miss Burney’s, contrasts of manners as bustling; scenes and persons as humanly humorous as Jane Austen’s. She combines their methods, enriching them by dialect, antithesis, allusion, and the “study” of types. There is humour _and_ wit in her work.

If, as we certainly admit, both are “worked out” carefully and the labour shows through, we must also acknowledge that she has embraced, and extended, all the achievements of woman before her day, indicating the powers realised and the possibilities to be accomplished.

THE WOMAN’S MAN

Although, as we have seen everywhere, the women novelists did so much in lifting the veil and, so to speak, giving themselves away; they also held up the mirror to man’s complacency, and, in a measure, enabled the other sex to see himself as they saw him. In the process they created a type, beloved of schoolgirls, which can only be described as the “Woman’s Man,” and must be admitted a partial travesty on human nature. It does not, however, reveal any less insight than much of man’s feminine portraiture.

Curiously enough, the earliest “Woman’s Man” in fiction was of male origin. We all know how Richardson, having given us Clarissa, was invited to exert his genius upon the “perfect gentleman.” But the little printer had ever an eye on the ladies, and, whether or no of malice prepense, drew the immaculate Sir Charles Grandison--frankly, in every particular--not as he must have known him in real life, but rather according to the pretty fancy of the dear creatures whose entreaties had called into being the gallant hero.

And, as elsewhere, Fanny Burney took up the type, refined it, and lent an attractive subtlety to that somewhat monumental erection of the infallible. The actual imaginings of woman are proved less wooden than Richardson supposed them, and infinitely more like human nature. In many things Lord Orville resembles Sir Charles. He is scarcely less perfect, but his empire is more restricted. The chorus of admiration granted to Grandison, and his astounding complacency, are replaced by the unconscious revelations of innocent girlhood naturally expressing her simple enthusiasm to the kindest of foster-parents. The peerless Orville, indeed, is not exactly a “popular” hero. It needs a superior mind to appreciate his superiority; and we suspect there were circles in which he was voted a “prodigious dull fellow.” His life was not passed in an atmosphere of worship. It is only in the heart of Evelina that he is king. Nor can we fancy Miss Burney submitting her heroine to the ignominy, as modern readers must judge it, of patiently and contentedly waiting, like Harriet Byron, until such time as his majesty should determine between the well-balanced claims of herself and her rival to the honour of his hand. Personally, we have never been able to satisfy ourselves whether Grandison loved Clementina more or less than Harriet; if he was properly “in love” with either.

It was, indeed, rather becoming so fine a gentleman to be wooed than to woo; and the visit to Italy was, in all likelihood, actually brought in as an afterthought, mainly designed to illustrate the power of conscience over a good man. Anyone less perfect than Sir Charles would be universally charged with having compromised Clementina; and the real motive of his English “selection in wives” was to escape the consequences of an entanglement involving difficulties about religion and constant association with the Italian temperament. Having thoroughly investigated the circumstances and judicially examined his own heart, the cool-headed young man decides that he is not in honour bound; gently but firmly severs the somewhat embarrassing connection; and, in dignified language, communicates his decision to “the other lady.” Humbly and gratefully she accepts his self-justification and his love. It is obvious that no one could ever have either refused him or questioned the dictates of his conscience. But as Jane Austen remarks, in a very different connection, “It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of a heroine’s dignity.” No woman writer would permit it.

Nevertheless, in the essential qualities of heart and mind, no less than in the heroine’s mental attitude towards their perfections, Lord Orville and Sir Charles Grandison belong to the same order of men: made by women for women. So far as I am aware, Miss Burney originated the semi-paternal relationship (reappearing, with variations, in Knightley and Henry Tilney) which certainly helped to deceive Evelina as to the state of her heart, and has in itself a peculiar charm. There is real delicacy, quite beyond Richardson or his Sir Charles, in Orville’s repeated attempts to preserve Evelina from her own ignorance; to give her (as none of her natural guardians ever attempted) some slight knowledge of the world; protect her from insult; and advise her in difficulty. He never intrudes or presumes; and, because, after all, women’s first and last mission as novel-writers was the refinement of fiction, it cannot be too often emphasised that Miss Burney was most extraordinarily refined for her age. The very coarseness in certain externals which she admits without protest, should serve only to establish her own innate superiority.

But it remains true that the essential attribute of Orville, as of Grandison, was perfectibility. He is a very Bayard, the _preux chevalier_, and the Sir Galahad of eighteenth-century drawing-rooms. Neither the author, nor her heroine, would have ever imagined it possible to criticise this prince of gentlemen. It really pained them when persons of inferior breeding or less exalted morality occasionally ventured to oppose his will or question his judgment. His praise, and his love, were alike a mighty condescension; his mere notice an honour almost greater than they could bear.

This is the modern, civilised notion of knighthood; the personification (in terms of everyday life) of that pure dream which has haunted, and will ever haunt, the musings of maidenhood; the pretty fancy that one day He, prince of fairyland, will ride into her very ordinary little existence, acclaim her queen, and carry her away somewhere to be happy ever after. Miss Burney translated the vision for her generation, making it, verily, not greatly dissimilar from actual human experience.

We shall see later how certain women of the Victorian era visualised the same ideal.

In the numberless remarkable signs of feminine advance between the authoress of _Evelina_ and Jane Austen we find that this particular attitude and ideal has almost completely vanished. The hero is no longer quite perfect; condescension is not now his most conspicuous virtue. The heroine, indeed, has become the one woman who ventures to criticise him. Darcy learns quite as much from Elizabeth as she from him. As already hinted, “Mr. Knightley” is the nearest approach in Jane Austen to the old type. He is the only person in Highbury who “ventured to criticise Emma”--without being sufficiently snubbed for his pains. He is, admittedly, the personification of superiority; though he is not very “sure of the lady.” Again the character is gently satirised in Henry Tilney, the situation of Northanger Abbey, as we have said above, being a more subtle parody of Evelina than of Udolpho. The young clergyman is nearly faultless. Catherine swears by him in everything--from theology to “sprigged muslin.” He, too, teaches her all she ever knew about the “great world”; and guides her, without a rival in authority, among the bewildering intricacies of men and books.

But, in her own domain and as to her most original creations, Miss Austen has been criticised for her occasional lack of insight towards men. It may be true, indeed, that neither Darcy nor Knightley always speaks, or behaves, quite like a gentlemen; which means that, like all women, she had not an absolutely unerring instinct for the things which are “not done.” In all probability, as men will never quite understand women’s emotional purity, women will never fully appreciate men’s alert sense of honour. Generally speaking, of course, the feminine standard in all things is far higher than the masculine; and the women novelists have done much in pulling us up to their level. But there are a few points, which concern deeper issues than social polish, of which few women, if any, can attain to the absolute ideal of chivalry.

There are, of course, many more superficial aspects by which the men in Jane Austen may be easily recognised as woman-made. We hear comparatively little of their point of view in affairs of the heart, with which the novels are mainly concerned, save in that most thoughtful passage closing _Persuasion_; and we know even less of their attitude towards ethics, citizenship, business, or social problems. Only clergymen or sailors are shown to be even superficially concerned with any profession in life; and this is merely because the authoress was personally intimate with both. It is, in fact, an infallible instinct for her own limitations which saved her from more obvious failure as a portrait-painter of men. Man at the tea-table is her chosen theme; and this too is a work which could not have been safely entrusted to any male pen.

The Brontës, on the other hand, exhibit a startlingly original and unexpected revival of the early type, in the central feature of its conception. Here once more the hero is most emphatically “the master”--of body and soul. Jane Eyre, we remember, loved--and served--her “employer”; Lucy Snowe and Shirley their “teachers.” There are, probably, no more arrogant males in fiction than these gentlemen; no more enslaved female worshippers. Yet the combination is totally unlike the Richardson-Burney brand. To begin with, the dominant, and domineering, hero is represented in each case as almost, if not quite, unique; not as the man normal. Nor are we called upon to admire without qualification. There is nothing ideal about Rochester, Monsieur Heger, Paul Emmanuel, or Louis Moore. The Brontë heroines did not at all admire perfection in man, and they abominated good looks. Nor were they, on the other hand, in the least humble by nature, generally yielding and clinging, or ever grateful for guidance and information. They had no patience and very little respect for the genus Homo.

There is, indeed, a touch of melodrama in the sharp contrast exhibited between their proud prickliness towards mankind and their idolatry of The Man. Few women have written more bitterly of our idle vanity, our heartless neglect and supreme selfishness, our blind folly, and our indifference to moral standards. None has spoken with more biting emphasis of woman’s natural superiority, or of the grinding tyranny which, for so many generations, she is herein shown to have stupidly endured. Yet Charlotte Brontë has declared, without qualification and more frankly than any of her sisters, that no woman can really love a man incapable of mastery; that she is ever longing for the whip.

To assert herself, to demand liberty or even equality, is uncongenial; and the aggressive attitude is only adopted as a duty, undertaken for the weaker sister from a passionate instinct for justice and an intolerance of sham. There were two things Charlotte Brontë hated: a handsome man and a deceitful woman. But hate left her very weary. It was the strain of playing prophetess that inspired her taste for “doormats.”

Obviously, the conception of a Hero thus evolved is essentially feminine. The most complacently conservative among us, however intolerant of the fine shades, could never have either conceived or admired a Rochester. We should certainly not suppose him attractive to any woman of character. To us he appears mere tinsel, the obvious counterfeit and exaggeration of a type we have come to despise a little at its best. Naturally, such men fancy that they can “do what they like with the women”; but _we_ knew better, until the novelist confirmed the truth of their boast. Miss Brontë, moreover, is very much farther from our idea of a gentleman than Miss Austen. It may be doubted if men ever like or applaud rudeness, which she apparently considers essential to honest manliness.

Yet, however unique in its external manifestations, and however exaggerated in expression, the Brontë hero-recipe involves, like Miss Burney’s, an assumption that happy marriages are achieved by meeting mastery with submission. However diverse their conceptions of the proper everyday balance between the sexes, both find their _ideal_ in the absolute monarchy of Man.

It must be always more difficult and more hazardous to determine an author’s private point of view as her art becomes more professional and self-conscious. George Eliot’s characters are all deliberate studies, neither the instinctive expression of an ideal nor the unconscious reflection of experience; and such manufactured products naturally tend to be extensively varied, seeking to avoid repetition or even similarity. We may, perhaps, say that George Eliot, out of her wider experience and more scholarly training, understood men better than her predecessors. She certainly avoided, as did Jane Austen, the specific “Woman’s Man”; and, on the other hand, she penetrated, without losing her way, more deeply into the masculine mystery than the creator of Messrs. Elton and Collins.