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Lyall Edna. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign: A Book of Appreciations
Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign: A Book of Appreciations
Table of Contents
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
THE SISTERS BRONTË. By MRS. OLIPHANT
GEORGE ELIOT. By MRS. LYNN LINTON
MRS. GASKELL. By EDNA LYALL
MRS. CROWE. MRS. ARCHER CLIVE. MRS. HENRY WOOD. By ADELINE SERGEANT
MRS. HENRY WOOD
LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. MRS. STRETTON. ANNE. MANNING. By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE
MRS. STRETTON
DINAH MULOCK (MRS. CRAIK) By MRS. PARR
JULIA KAVANAGH. AMELIA. BLANDFORD EDWARDS. By MRS. MACQUOID
MRS. NORTON. By MRS. ALEXANDER
"A. L. O. E." (MISS TUCKER) MRS. EWING. By MRS. MARSHALL
MRS. EWING
Отрывок из книги
Adeline Sergeant, Charlotte M. Yonge, E. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Alexander, Mrs. Oliphant
Published by Good Press, 2019
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Young ladies like Miss Charlotte Brontë and Miss Ellen Nussey her friend, would have died rather than give vent to such sentiments; but when the one of them to whom that gift was given found that her pen had become a powerful instrument in her hand, the current of the restrained feeling burst all boundaries, and she poured forth the cry which nobody had suspected before. It had been a thing to be denied, to be indignantly contradicted as impossible, if ever a lovesick girl put herself forth to the shame of her fellows and the laugh of the world. When such a phenomenon appeared, she was condemned as either bad or foolish by every law: and the idea that she was capable of "running after" a man was the most dreadful accusation that could be brought against a woman. Miss Brontë's heroines, however, did not precisely do this. Shirley and Caroline Helstone were not in love so much as longing for love, clamouring for it, feeling it to be their right of which they were somehow defrauded. There is a good deal to be said for such a view. If it is the most virtuous thing in the world for a man to desire to marry, to found a family, to be the father of children, it should be no shameful thing for a woman to own the same desire. But it is somehow against the instinct of primitive humanity, which has decided that the woman should be no more than responsive, maintaining a reserve in respect to her feelings, subduing the expression, unless in the "once, and only once, and to One only" of the poet.
Charlotte Brontë was the first to overthrow this superstition. Personally I am disposed to stand for the superstition, and dislike all transgression of it. But that was not the view of the most reticent and self-controlled of maidens, the little governess, clad in all the strict proprieties of the period, the parson's daughter despising curates, and unacquainted with other men. In her secret heart, she demanded of fate night and day why she, so full of life and capability, should be left there to dry up and wither; and why Providence refused her the completion of her being. Her heart was not set on a special love; still less was there anything fleshly or sensual in her imagination. It is a shame to use such words in speaking of her, even though to cast them forth as wholly inapplicable. The woman's grievance—that she should be left there unwooed, unloved, out of reach of the natural openings of life: without hope of motherhood: with the great instinct of her being unfulfilled—was almost a philosophical, and entirely an abstract, grievance, felt by her for her kind: for every woman dropped out of sight and unable to attain the manner of existence for which she was created. And I think it was the first time this cry had been heard out of the mouth of a perfectly modest and pure-minded woman, nay, out of the mouth of any woman; for it had nothing to do with the shriek of the Sapphos for love. It was more startling, more confusing to the general mind, than the wail of the lovelorn. The gentle victim of "a disappointment," or even the soured and angered victim, was a thing quite understood and familiar: but not the woman calling upon heaven and earth to witness that all the fates were conspiring against her to cheat her of her natural career.
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