Читать книгу Heroines Of Fiction - William Dean Howells - Страница 16

Belinda Portman is no such ingenue as Evelina; she is of a far more sophisticated good sense even than Cecilia, whose more reasoned and tempered innocence she rather partakes. She has a very worldly-minded Mrs. Selina Stanhope for her aunt, who at Bath arranges her invitation for a London season from Lady Delacour, and supplies her with a store of mundane maxims, such as Mrs. Stanhope had found effectual in managing the matrimonial campaigns of five other nieces. The first interesting quality in Belinda is that she has not the wish to profit by this dark wisdom of Mrs. Stanhope's; but early in her London career a mortifying accident acquaints her with the fact that she is supposed to be there to further these matchmaking schemes of her aunt. She is already in love with one of the young men she hears talking her over, and with the hurt to her girlish dignity and delicacy, she begins to think and to reflect. From that hour her evolution into a woman of good sense and good-will, of magnanimous impulses and generous actions is probably and entertainingly accomplished by the author, with unfailing confidence in an apparently inexhaustible knowledge of the London world.

What this world was, how dissipated, unprincipled, brutal, reckless, steeped in debt and drink, has never been more frankly shown. The moral is always present in the picture, and it is too often applied with inartistic directness, but it is not always so applied. There are abundant moments of pure drama, when the character is expressed in the action; and though much of the motive that ought to be seen is stated, still enough of it is seen to constitute the story a work of art. The author proves herself in all her books an aesthetic force; she was perverted in her artistic instincts by false ideals of duty; but she knew human nature, and when she would allow herself to do so she could represent life with masterly power. She does not get Belinda fully before the reader without many needless devices to deepen the intrigue, and many tiresome lectures to enforce the lesson, but she does give at last the full sense of a beautiful girl who gains rather than loses in delightfulness by growing wiser and better. Discreet Belinda has always been, but at first, she is discreet for herself only; and at last she is wise for others as well. A fair half of the book might be thrown away with the effect of twice enriching what was left; perhaps two-thirds might be parted with to advantage; certainly all that does not relate to Belinda's friendship with Lady Delacour and her love for Clarence Harvey would not be missed by the reader who likes art better than artifice, and prefers to make his own applications of the facts. The friendship between Belinda and Lady Delacour is more important than the love between Belinda and Clarence; but if the story were reduced to the truly wonderful study of Lady Delacour's passionate and distorted nature, she and not Belinda would be the heroine of " Belinda.'' As it is, it is she who has the greater fascination for the experienced witness, and for any student of womanhood the dramatic portrayal of her jealousy must appeal as a masterpiece almost unique in that sort.