I am obnoxious to each carping tongue That says my hand a needle better
fits. . . . . . . . Men can do best, and women know it well; Preeminence in
each and all is yours, Yet grant some small acknowledgment of ours. -- Anne Bradstreet, 1640.
Let us be wise, and not
impede the soul. Let her work as she will. Let us have one creative energy, one
incessant revelation. Let it take what form it will, and let us not bind it by
the past to man or woman. -- Margaret Fuller, 1844.
IT is difficult to
disengage a single thread from the living web of a nation's literature. The
interplay of influences is such that the product spun from the heart and brain
of woman alone must, when thus disengaged, lose something of its significance.
In criticism a classification based upon sex is necessarily misleading and
inexact. As far as difference between the literary work of women and that of
men is created by difference of environment and training it may be regarded as
accidental; while the really essential difference, resulting from the general
law that the work of woman shall somehow subtly express womanhood, not only
varies widely in degree with the individual worker, but is, in certain lines of
production, almost ungraspable by criticism. We cannot rear walls which shall separate
literature into departments, upon a principle elusive as the air. "It is
no more the order of nature that the especially feminine element should be
incarnated pure in any form, than that the masculine energy should exist
unmingled with it in any form." The experiment which, Lowell tells us,
Nature tried in shaping the genius of Hawthorne, she repeats and reverses at
will.
In practice the evil
effects which have followed the separate consideration of woman's work in
literature are sufficiently plain. The debasement of the coin of criticism is a
fatal measure. The dearest foe of the woman artist in the past has been the
suave and chivalrous critic, who, judging all "female writers" by a
special standard, has easily bestowed the unearned wreath.
The present paper is
grounded, it will be seen, upon no preference for the Shaker-meeting
arrangement which prevailed so long in our American temple of the Muses. It has
seemed desirable, in a historical review of the work of women in this country,
to follow the course of their effort in the field of literature; to note the
occasional impediments of the stream, its sudden accessions of force, its
general tendency, and its gradual widening.
The colonial period
has, of course, little to give us. The professional literary woman was then
unknown. The verses of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, called in flattery "the tenth
Muse," were "the fruit but of some few hours curtailed from her sleep
and other refreshments." The negro girl Phillis Wheatley, whose poetical
efforts had been published under aristocratic patronage in England, when robbed
of her mistress by death "resorted to marriage" -- not to literature
-- "as the only alternative of destitution." Mrs. Mercy Warren was
never obliged to seek support from that sharp-pointed pen which copied so
cleverly the satiric style of Pope, and which has left voluminous records of
the Revolution. She too wrote her tragedies "for amusement, in the
solitary hours when her friends were abroad."
Miss Hannah Adams, born
in Massachusetts in 1755, may be accepted as the first American woman who made
literature her profession. Her appearance as a pioneer in this country
corresponds closely in time with that of Mary Wollstonecraft in England. She
wrote, at seventy-seven, the story of her life. Her account sets forth clearly
the difficulties which in her youth had to be dealt with by a woman seriously
undertaking authorship. Ill health, which forbade her attending school, was an
individual disadvantage; but she remarks incidentally on the defectiveness of
the country school, where girls learned only to write and cipher, and were in
summer "instructed by females in reading, sewing, and other kinds of work.
. . . I remember that my first idea of the happiness of heaven was of a place
where we should find our thirst for knowledge fully gratified." How
pathetically the old woman recalls the longing of the eager girl! All her life
she labored against odds; learning, however, the rudiments of Latin, Greek,
geography, and logic, "with indescribable pleasure and avidity," from
some gentlemen boarding at her father's house. Becoming interested in religious
controversy, she formed the plan of compiling a "View of Religions";
not at first hoping to derive what she calls "emolument" from the
work. To win bread she relied at this time upon spinning, sewing, or knitting,
and, during the Revolutionary war, on the weaving of bobbin lace; afterwards
falling back on her scant classical resources to teach young gentlemen Latin
and Greek. Meanwhile the compilation went on. "Reading much religious
controversy," observes Miss Adams, "must be extremely trying to a
female, whose mind, instead of being strengthened by those studies which
exercise the judgment and give stability to the character, is debilitated by
reading romances and novels." This sense of disadvantage, of the meekly
accepted burden of sex, pervades the autobiography; it seems the story of a
patient cripple. When the long task was done her inexperience made her the dupe
of a dishonest printer; and, although the book sold well, her only compensation
was fifty copies, for which she was obliged herself to find purchasers, having
previously procured four hundred subscribers. Fortunately she had the
copyright; and before the publication of a second edition she chanced to make
the acquaintance of a clerical good Samaritan, who transacted the business for
her. The "emolument" derived from this second edition at last enabled
her to pay her debts, and to put out a small sum upon interest. Her
"History of New England," in the preparation of which her eyesight
was nearly sacrificed, met with a good sale; but an abridgment of it brought
her nothing, on account of the failure of the printer. She sold the copyright
of her "Evidences of Christianity" for one hundred dollars in books.
This, then, is our
starting-point -- evident character and ability, at a disadvantage both in
production and in the disposal of the product; imperfect educational equipment;
and a hopeless consciousness of inferiority, amounting almost to an inability
to stand upright mentally.
Susanna Rowson, who
wrote the popular "Charlotte Temple," may be classed as an American
novelist, though not born in this country. She appears also as a writer of
patriotic songs, an actress, a teacher, and the compiler of a dictionary and
other school-books. "The Coquette; or, the History of Eliza Wharton,"
by Hannah Webster Foster, was another prime favorite among the formal novels of
the day.
Kind Miss Hannah Adams,
in her old age, chanced to praise a certain metrical effort, unpromisingly
labeled "Jephthah's Rash Vow," put forth by a girl of sixteen, Miss
Caroline Howard. Here occurs an indicative touch. "When I learned,"
says the commended Miss Caroline, "that my verses had been surreptitiously
printed in a newspaper, I wept bitterly, and was as alarmed as if I had been
detected in man's apparel." Such was the feeling with which the
singing-robes were donned by a maiden in 1810 -- a state of affairs soon to be
replaced by a general fashion of feminine singing-robes of rather cheap
material. During the second quarter of the present century conditions somewhat
improved, and production greatly increased. "There was a wide
manifestation of that which bears to pure ideality an inferior
relationship," writes Mr. Stedman of the general body of our literature at
this period. In 1848 Dr. Griswold reports that "women among us are taking
a leading part"; that "the proportion of female writers at this
moment in America far exceeds that which the present or any other age in
England exhibits." Awful moment in America! one is led to exclaim by a
survey of the poetic field. Alas, the verse of those "Tokens," and
"Keepsakes," and "Forget-Me-Nots," and
"Magnolias," and all the rest of the annuals, all glorious without in
their red or white Turkey morocco and gilding! Alas, the flocks of quasi swan-
singers! They have sailed away down the river of Time, chanting with a
monotonous mournfulness. We need not speak of them at length. One of them early
wrote about the Genius of Oblivion; most of them wrote for it. It was not their
fault that their toil increased the sum of the "Literature suited to
Desolate Islands." The time was out of joint. Sentimentalism infected both
continents. It was natural enough that the infection should seize most strongly
upon those who were weakened by an intellectual best- parlor atmosphere, with
small chance of free out-of-door currents. They had their reward. Their crude
constituencies were proud of them; and not all wrought without
"emolument," though it need hardly be said that verse-making was not
and is not, as a rule, a remunerative occupation. Some names survive, held in
the memory of the public by a few small, sweet songs on simple themes, probably
undervalued by their authors, but floating now like flowers above the tide that
has swallowed so many pretentious, sand-based structures.
Mrs. Lydia H.
Sigourney, the most prolific poetess of the period, was hailed as "the
American Mrs. Hemans." A gentle and pious womanhood shone through her
verse; but her books are undisturbed and dusty in the libraries now, and likely
to remain so. Maria Gowen Brooks -- "Maria del Occidente" -- was, on
the other hand, not popular at home; but put forth a far stronger claim than
Mrs. Sigourney, and won indeed somewhat disproportionate praises abroad.
"Southey says 'Zophiel; or, The Bride of Seven,' is by some Yankee
woman," writes Charles Lamb; "as if there had ever been a woman
capable of anything so great!" One is glad that we need not now consider
as the acme of woman's poetic achievements this metrical narrative of the loves
of the angels; nevertheless, it is on the whole a remarkably sustained work,
with a gorgeousness of coloring which might perhaps be traced to its author's
Celtic strain.
As Mrs. Samuel Gilman,
Caroline Howard, of whom we have already spoken, carried the New England spirit
into a Southern home, and there wrote not only verses, but sketches and tales,
much in the manner of her sisters who never left the Puritan nest, though
dealing at times with material strange to them, as in her "Recollections
of a Southern Matron." With the women of New England lies our chief
concern, until a date comparatively recent. A strong, thinking, working race --
all know the type; granite rock, out of its crevices the unexpected harebells
trembling here and there. As writers they have a general resemblance; in one
case a little more mica and glitter, in another more harebells than usual. Mrs.
Sigourney, for instance, presents an azure predominance of the flowery, on a
basis of the practical. Think of her fifty-seven volumes -- copious verse,
religious and sentimental; sketches of travel; didactic "Letters to
Mothers," "Letters to Young Ladies"; the charmingly garrulous
"Letters of Life," published after her death. Quantity, dilution,
diffusiveness, the dispersion of energy in a variety of aims -- these were the
order of the day. Lydia Maria Child wrote more than thirty-five books and
pamphlets, beginning with the apotheosis of the aboriginal American in romance,
ending in the good fight with slavery, and taking in by the way domestic
economy, the progress of religious ideas, and the Athens of Pericles, somewhat
romanticized. Firm granite here, not without ferns of tenderest grace. It is
very curious and impressive, the self-reliant dignity with which these noble
matrons circumambulate the whole field of literature with errant feet, but with
a character central and composed. They are "something better than their
verse," and also than their prose. Why was it that the dispersive tendency
of the time showed itself especially in the literary effort of women? Perhaps
the scattering, haphazard kind of education then commonly bestowed upon girls
helped to bring about such a condition of things. Efficient work, in literature
as in other professions, is dependent in a degree upon preparation; not indeed
upon the actual amount of knowledge possessed, but upon the training of the
mind to sure action, and the vitality of the spark of intellectual life
communicated in early days. To the desultory and aimless education of girls at
this period, and their continual servitude to the sampler, all will testify.
"My education," says Mrs. Gilman, "was exceedingly irregular, a
perpetual passing from school to school. I drew a very little and worked 'The
Babes in the Wood' on white satin, with floss silk." By and by, however,
she "was initiated into Latin," studied Watts's "Logic" by
herself, and joined a private class in French. Lydia Huntley (Mrs. Sigourney)
fared somewhat better, pursuing mathematics, though she admits that too little
time was accorded to the subject, and being instructed in "the
belles-lettres studies" by competent teachers. Her school education ceased
at thirteen; she afterwards worked alone over history and mental philosophy,
had tutors in Latin and French, and even dipped into Hebrew, under clerical
guidance. This has a deceptively advanced sound; we are to learn presently that
she was sent away to boarding-school, where she applied herself to
"embroidery of historical scenes, filigree, and other finger-works."
(May we not find a connection between this kind of training and the production
of dramatic characters as lifelike as those figures in floss silk? Was it not a
natural result, that corresponding "embroidery of historical scenes"
performed by the feminine pen?) Lydia Maria Francis (Mrs. Child), "apart
from her brother's companionship, had, as usual, a very unequal share of
educational opportunities; attending only the public schools," -- the
public schools of the century in its teens, -- "with one year at a private
seminary." Catherine Sedgwick, "reared in an atmosphere of high
intelligence," still confesses, "I have all my life felt the want of
more systematic training."
Another cause of the
scattering, unmethodical supply may have been the vagueness of the demand.
America was not quite sure what it was proper to expect of the "female
Writer"; and perhaps that lady herself had a lingering feudal idea that
she could hold literary territory only on condition of stout pen service in the
cause of the domestic virtues and pudding. "In those days," says
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "it seemed to be held necessary for American
women to work their passage into literature by first compiling a cookery
book." Thus we have Mrs. Child's "Frugal Housewife"; and we find
clever Eliza Leslie, of Philadelphia, putting forth "Seventy-five
Receipts" before she ventures upon her humorous and satirical "Pencil
Sketches." The culinary tradition was carried on, somewhat later, by
Catherine Beecher, with her "Domestic Receipt Book"; and we have
indeed most modern instances in the excellent "Common-sense Series"
of the novelist "Marion Harland," and in Mrs. Whitney's "Just
How." Perhaps, however, it is not fancy that these wear the kitchen apron
with a difference.
In addition to lack of
training, and to the vague nature of the public demand, a third cause operated
against symmetrical artistic development among the women of those electric days
preceding the civil war. That struggle between the art instinct and the desire
for reform, which is not likely to cease entirely until the coming of the
golden year, was then at its height. Both men and women were drawn into the
maelstrom of the antislavery conflict; yet to a few men the artist's single aim
seemed still possible -- to Longfellow, to Hawthorne. Similar examples are
lacking among contemporary women. Essential womanhood, "das
Ewigweibliche," seems at this point unusually clear in the work of women;
the passion for conduct, the enthusiasm for abstract justice, not less than the
potential motherhood that yearns over all suffering. The strong Hebraic element
in the spiritual life of New England women in particular tended to withdraw
them from the service of pure art at this period. "My natural
inclinations," wrote Lydia Maria Child, "drew me much more strongly
towards literature and the arts than towards reform, and the weight of
conscience was needed to turn the scale."
Mrs. Child and Miss
Sedgwick, chosen favorites of the public, stand forth as typical figures. Both
have the art instinct, both the desire for reform: in Mrs. Child the latter
decidedly triumphs, in spite of her romances; in Miss Sedgwick the former,
though less decidedly, in spite of her incidental preachments. She wrote
"without any purpose or hope to slay giants," aiming merely "to
supply mediocre readers with small moral hints on various subjects that come up
in daily life." It is interesting to note just what public favor meant
materially to the most popular women writers of those days. Miss Sedgwick, at a
time when she had reached high- water mark, wrote in reply to one who expected
her to acquire a fortune, that she found it impossible to make much out of
novel- writing while cheap editions of English novels filled the market.
"I may go on," she says "earning a few hundred dollars a year,
and precious few too." One could not even earn the "precious
few" without observing certain laws of silence. The "Appeal in Behalf
of that Class of Americans called Africans" seriously lessened the income
of Mrs. Child. That dubious America of 1833 was decided on one point -- this
was not what she expected of the "female writer." She was willing to
be instructed by a woman -- about the polishing of furniture and the education
of daughters.
And now there arises
before us another figure, of striking singularity and power. Margaret Fuller
never appeared as a candidate for popular favor. On the polishing of furniture
she was absolutely silent; nor, though she professed "high respect for
those who 'cook something good,' and create and preserve fair order in
houses," did she ever fulfil the understood duty of woman by publishing a
cookery book. On the education of daughters she had, however, a vital word to
say; demanding for them "a far wider and more generous culture." Her
own education had been of an exceptional character; she was fortunate in its
depth and solidity, though unfortunate in the forcing process that had made her
a hard student at six years old. Her equipment was superior to that of any
American woman who had previously entered the field of literature; and hers was
a powerful genius, but, by the irony of fate, a genius not prompt to clothe
itself in the written word. As to the inspiration of her speech all seem to
agree; but one who knew her well has spoken of the "singular embarrassment
and hesitation induced by the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper."
The reader of the sibylline leaves she scattered about her in her strange
career receives the constant impression of hampered power, of force that has
never found its proper outlet. In "Woman in the Nineteenth Century"
there is certainly something of that "shoreless Asiatic dreaminess"
complained of by Carlyle; but there are also to be found rich words, fit, like
those of Emerson, for "gold nails in temples to hang trophies on."
The critical Scotchman himself subsequently owned that "some of her Papers
are the undeniable utterances of a true heroic mind; altogether unique, so far
as I know, among the Writing Women of this generation; rare enough, too, God
knows, among the Writing Men." She accomplished comparatively little that
can be shown or reckoned. Her mission was "to free, arouse, dilate."
Those who immediately responded were few; and as the circle of her influence
has widened through their lives the source of the original impulse has been
unnamed and forgotten. But if we are disposed to rank a fragmentary greatness
above a narrow perfection, to value loftiness of aim more than the complete
attainment of an inferior object, we must set Margaret Fuller, despite all
errors of judgment, all faults of style, very high among the "Writing
Women" of America. It is time that, ceasing to discuss her personal
traits, we dwell only upon the permanent and essential in her whose mind was
fixed upon the permanent, the essential. Her place in our literature is her
own; it has not been filled, nor does it seem likely to be. The particular kind
of force which she exhibited -- in so far as it was not individual -- stands a
chance in our own day of being drawn into the educational field, now that the
"wider and more generous culture" which she claimed has been accorded
to women.
We may trace from the
early publications of Lydia Maria Francis and Catherine Sedgwick the special
line along which women have worked most successfully. It is in fiction that
they have wrought with the greatest vigor and freedom, and in that important
class of fiction which reflects faithfully the national life, broadly or in
sectional phases. In 1821 Miss Francis, a girl of nineteen, wrote "Hobomok,"
a rather crude novel of colonial Massachusetts, with an Indian hero. Those were
the times of the pseudo-American school, the heyday of what Mr. Stedman has
called "the supposititious Indian." To the sanguine
"Hobomok" seemed to foreshadow a feminine Cooper, and its author put
forth in the following year "The Rebels," a novel of Boston before
the Revolution. A more effective worker on this line, however, was Miss
Sedgwick, whose "New England Tale" -- a simple little story,
originally intended as a tract -- was published in 1822, and at once drew
attention, in spite of a certain thinness, by its recognizable home flavor. The
plain presentation of New England life in "Redwood," her succeeding
book, interests and convinces the reader of to-day. Some worthless elements of
plot, now out of date, are introduced; but age cannot wither nor custom stale
the fresh reality of the most memorable figure -- that manly soul Miss Deborah,
a character as distinct as Scott himself could have made her. "Hope
Leslie," "Clarence," and "The Linwoods" followed; then
the briefer tales supplying "small moral hints," such as the
"Poor Rich Man and Rich Poor Man." All are genuine, wholesome,
deserving of the hearty welcome they received. "Wise, clear, and
kindly," one must echo the verdict of Margaret Fuller on our gentle
pioneer in native fiction; we may look back with pride on her "speech
moderate and sane, but never palsied by fear or skeptical caution"; on
herself, "a fine example of the independent and beneficent existence that
intellect and character can give to women." The least studied among her
pathetic scenes are admirable; and she displays some healthy humor, though not
as much as her charming letters indicate that she possessed. A recent writer
has ranked her work in one respect above that of Cooper, pronouncing it more
truly calculated to effect "the emancipation of the American mind from
foreign types."
Miss Sedgwick, past
threescore, was still in the literary harness when the woman who was destined
to bring the novel of New England to a fuller development reached fame at a
bound with "Uncle Tom's Cabin." At last the artist's instinct and the
purpose of the reformer were fused, as far as they are capable of fusion, in a
story that still holds its reader, whether passive or protesting, with the grip
of the master-hand. The inborn powers of Mrs. Stowe were fortunately developed
in a home atmosphere that supplied deficiencies in training. Fate was kind in
providing occasional stimulants for the feminine mind, though an adequate and
regular supply was customarily withheld. Miss Sedgwick attributes an especial
quickening force to the valuable selections read aloud by her father to his
family; Miss Francis, as we have seen, owed much to the conversation of her
brother. To Harriet Beecher was granted, outside her inspiring home circle, an
extra stimulus in the early influence of the enthusiastic teacher whose
portrait she has given us in the Jonathan Rossiter of "Oldtown
Folks." A close knowledge of Scott's novels from her girlhood had its
effect in shaping her methods of narration. She knew her Bible -- perpetual
fountain feeding the noblest streams of English literature -- as Ruskin knew
his. Residence for years near the Ohio border had familiarized her with some of
the darkest aspects of slavery; so that when the passage of the Fugitive Slave
Law roused her to the task of exhibiting the system in operation, she was as
fully prepared to execute that task as a woman of New England birth and
traditions well could be. Since the war Southern writers, producing with the
ease of intimacy works steeped in the spirit of the South, have taught us much
concerning negro character and manners, and have accustomed us to an accurate
reproduction of dialect. The sublimity of Uncle Tom has been tried by the
reality of the not less lovable Uncle Remus. But whatever blemishes or
extravagances may appear to a critical eye in the great antislavery novel, it
still beats with that intense life which nearly forty years ago awoke a deep
responsive thrill in the repressed heart of the North. We are at present
chiefly concerned with its immense practical success. It was a "shot heard
round the world." Ten thousand copies were sold in a few days; over three
hundred thousand in a year; eight power presses were kept running day and night
to supply the continual demand. The British Museum now contains thirty-five
complete editions in English, and translations exist in at least twenty
different languages. "Never did any American work have such success,"
exclaims Mrs. Child, in one of her enthusiastic letters. "It has done much
to command respect for the faculties of woman." The influences are,
indeed, broad and general which have since that day removed all restrictions
tending to impress inferiority on the woman writer, so that the distinction of
sex is lost in the distinction of schools. Yet a special influence may be
attributed to this single marked manifestation of force, to this imposing
popular triumph. In the face of the fact that the one American book which had stormed
Europe was the work of a woman, the old tone of patronage became ridiculous,
the old sense of ordained and inevitable weakness on the part of the
"female writer" became obsolete. Women henceforth, whatever their
personal feelings in regard to the much-discussed book, were enabled,
consciously or unconsciously, to hold the pen more firmly, to move it more
freely. In New England fiction what a leap from the work of Miss Sedgwick,
worthy as it is, to that of Mrs. Stowe! The field whence a few hardy growths
were peeping seems to have been overflowed by a fertilizing river, so rich is
its new yield. It is "the soul of Down East" that we find in
"The Minister's Wooing" and "Oldtown Folks." Things
spiritual are grasped with the insight of kinship, externals are drawn with the
certainty of lifelong acquaintance. If we glance at the humorous side of the
picture, surely no hand that ever wrought could have bettered one
smile-provoking line in the familiar figure of Sam Lawson, the village
do-nothing. There is a free-handedness in the treatment of this character not
often found in more recent conscientious studies of local types; it is as a
painting beside photographs. A certain inequality, it may be admitted, appears
in the range of Mrs. Stowe's productions. They form links, more or less
shining, between a time of confused and groping effort on the part of women and
a time of definitely directed aims, of a concentration that has, inevitably,
its own drawbacks.
The encouragement of
the great magazines, from the first friendly to women writers, is an important
factor in their development. "Harper's" dates from 1850; "The
Atlantic Monthly," in 1857, opened a new outlet for literary work of a
high grade. Here appeared many of the short stories of Rose Terry, depicting
the life of New England; unsurpassable in their fidelity to nature, their
spontaneous flow, their grim humor, pathos, tragedy. In the pages of "The
Atlantic," too, suddenly flashed into sight the brilliant exotics of
Harriet Prescott, who holds among American women a position as singular as that
of Poe among men. Her characters have their being in some remote, gorgeous
sunset-land; we feel that the Boston Common of "Azarian" is based
upon a cloud rather than solid Yankee earth, and the author can scarce pluck a
May flower but it turns at her touch to something rich and strange. Native
flavor there is in some of her shorter stories, such as "The South
Breaker" and "Knitting Sale-Socks"; but a sudden waft of foreign
spices is sure to mingle with the sea-wind or the inland lilac-scents.
"The Amber Gods" and "The Thief in the Night" skillfully
involve the reader in a dazzling web of deceptive strength.
In "Temple
House," "Two Men," and "The Morgesons," the peculiarly
powerful works of Mrs. Stoddard, the central figures do not seem necessarily of
any particular time or country. Their local habitation, however, is
impressively painted; with a few swift, vigorous strokes the old coast towns
spring up before us; the very savor of the air is imparted. Minor characters
strongly smack of the soil; old Cuth, in "Two Men," dying
"silently and firmly, like a wolf"; Else, in the same book. There are
scenes of a superb fierce power -- that of the wreck in "Temple
House," for instance. The curt and repressed style, the ironic humor of
Mrs. Stoddard, serve to grapple her work to the memory as with hooks of steel;
it is as remote as possible from the conventional notion of woman's writing.
The old conflict
between the reformer's passion and the art instinct is renewed in the novels
and stories of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, who possesses the artist's
responsiveness in a high degree, with but little of the artist's restraint.
Exquisitely sensitive to the significant beauty of the world, she is no less
sensitive to the appeal of human pain. In "Hedged In" and "The
Silent Partner," in her stories of the squalid tenement and the
storm-beaten coast, her literary work reflects, point for point, her personal
work for the fallen, the toiling, and the tempted. Her passionate sympathy
gives her a power of thrilling, of commanding the tribute of tears, which is
all her own. An enthusiast for womanhood, she has given us in "The Story
of Avis" and "Dr. Zay" striking studies of complementary themes;
"Avis," despite certain flaws of style to which objection is trite,
remaining the greater, as it is the sadder, book. All Miss Phelps's stories
strike root into New England, though it is not precisely Mrs. Cooke's New
England of iron farmers and stony farms; and none strikes deeper root than
"Avis," a natural product of the intellectual region whence
"Woman in the Nineteenth Century" sprang thirty years before. No
other woman, among writers who have arisen since the war, has received in such
fullness the spiritual inheritance of New England's past.
The changes brought
about by the influx of foreigners into the factory towns of the East are
reflected in the pages of Miss Phelps, particularly in "The Silent
Partner." A recent worker of the same vein is Lillie Chace Wyman, whose
short stories, collected under the symbolic title "Poverty Grass,"
are marked by sincerity and simple power. Sarah Orne Jewett roams the old
pastures, gathering many pungent handfuls of the familiar flowers and herbs
that retain for us their homely preciousness. She is attracted also by the life
of the coast. Without vigorous movement, her sketches and stories have always
an individual, delicate picturesqueness, the quality of a small, clear water-
color. "A Country Doctor" is to be noted for its very quiet and true
presentation of a symmetrical womanhood, naturally drawn towards the large
helpfulness of professional life.
A novel which has
lately aroused much discussion, the "John Ward, Preacher," of
Margaret Deland, is, although its scene is laid in Pennsylvania, a legitimate
growth of New England in its problem and its central character. The orthodox
idea of eternal future punishment receives a treatment somewhat similar to that
applied by Miss Phelps in "The Gates Ajar" to the conventional
heaven. The hero seems a revisitant Thomas Shepard, or other stern yet tender
Puritan of the past, miraculously set down in a modern environment. The
incisiveness of portions of "John Ward," as well as the grace of its
side scenes, gives promise of still more valuable coming contributions to American
fiction by the poet of the charming "Old Garden." A yet later New
England production is the book of stories by Mary E. Wilkins, "A Humble
Romance," a work brimful of vigor and human nature.
We need not now enter
into the circumstances tending to the misdirection of intellectual effort which
so affected the work of Southern women in literature that for some time they
produced little of enduring value. These causes have been of late fully set
forth by a writer of the new South, Thomas Nelson Page, who in naming the women
of Southern birth or residence most prominent as novelists before the civil war
places Mrs. Terhune in a class by herself. "Like the others, she has used
the Southern life as material, but has exhibited a literary sense of far higher
order, and an artistic touch." Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis, a native of
West Virginia, has chosen a Pennsylvanian background for some of her best work;
producing, perhaps, nothing stronger than "Life in the Iron Mills,"
published long since in "The Atlantic" -- a story distantly akin to
those of Miss Phelps and the author of "Poverty Grass." The hopeless
heart-hunger of the poor has seldom been so passionately pictured. A
distinguishing characteristic of the work of Mrs. Davis is her Browning-like
insistence on the rare test- moments of life. If, as in the complicated
war-time novel "Waiting for the Verdict," -- a work of high
intention, -- the characters come out startlingly well in the sudden lights
flashed upon them, the writer's idealism is tonic and uplifting.
It was a woman of the
North who pictured, in a series of brief tales and sketches full of insight,
the desolate South at the close of the civil war -- Constance Fenimore Woolson,
the most broadly national of our women novelists. Her feeling for local color
is quick and true; and though she has especially identified herself with the
Lake country and with Florida, one is left with the impression that her
assimilative powers would enable her to reproduce as successfully the traits of
any other quarter of the Union. Few American writers of fiction have given
evidence of such breadth, so full a sense of the possibilities of the varied
and complex life of our wide land. Robust, capable, mature -- these seem
fitting words to apply to the author of "Anne," of "East
Angels," of the excellent short stories in "Rodman the Keeper."
Women have reason for pride in a representative novelist whose genius is
trained and controlled, without being tamed or dispirited.
Similar surefootedness
and mastery of means are displayed by Mary Hallock Foote in her picturesque
Western stories, such as "The Led-Horse Claim: a Romance of a Mining
Camp," and "John Bodewin's Testimony" -- in which a certain
gracefulness takes the place of the fuller warmth of Miss Woolson. One is apt
to name the two writers together, since they represent the most supple and
practiced talent just now exercised by women in the department of fiction.
Mrs. Frances Hodgson
Burnett, English by birth and education, and influenced by the Dickens
tradition, though reflecting the tone of her environment wherever fate may lead
her, touches American literature chiefly on the Southern side, through
"Louisiana" and "Esmeralda." Despite the ambitious
character of her novel of Washington society, "Through One
Administration," her most durable work is either thoroughly English or
belongs to the international school. This particular branch of fiction we
cannot now pause to note, though conscious that such books as the beautiful
"Guenn" of Blanche Willis Howard have their own distinct value.
A truly native flower,
though gathered in a field so unfamiliar as to wear a seemingly foreign charm,
is Mrs. Jackson's poetic "Ramona." A book instinct with passionate
purpose, intensely alive and involving the reader in its movement, it yet
contains an idyl of singular loveliness, the perfection of which lends the
force of contrast to the pathetic close. A novel of reform, into which a great
and generous soul poured its gathered strength, it none the less possesses
artistic distinction. Something is, of course, due to the charm of atmosphere,
the beauty of the background against which the plot naturally placed itself;
more, to the trained hand, the pen pliant with long and free exercise; most, to
the poet-heart. "Ramona" stands as the most finished, though not the
most striking, example that what American women have done notably in literature
they have done nobly.
The magazine-reading
world has hardly recovered yet from its shock of surprise on discovering the
author of "In the Tennessee Mountains," a book of short stories
projecting the lines on which the writer has since advanced in "The
Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains" and "The Despot of Broomsedge Cove."
Why did Miss Murfree prefer to begin her literary career under the masculine
name of "Charles Egbert Craddock"? Probably for the same reason as
George Sand, George Eliot, Currer Bell; a reason stated by a stanch advocate of
women, in words that form a convenient answer to the common sneer, "Not
because they wished to be men, but because they wished for an unbiased judgment
as artists." The world has grown so much more enlightened on this point
that the biased critic is now the exception, and the biased editor is a myth.
The precaution of disguise cannot much longer remain a necessity, if, indeed,
it was necessary in the case of Miss Murfree.
From whatever cause
adopted, the mask was a completely deceptive one. Mr. Craddock's vivid
portrayal of life among the Tennessee mountains was fairly discussed and
welcomed as a valuable and characteristic contribution from the South; and
nobody hinted then that the subtle poetic element and the tendency to
subordinate human interest to scenery were indications of the writer's sex. The
few cherishers of the fading superstition that women are without humor laughed
heartily and unsuspiciously over the droll situations, the quaint sayings of
the mountaineers. Once more the reductio ad absurdum has been applied to the
notion of ordained, invariable, and discernible difference between the literary
work of men and that of women. The method certainly defers to dullness; but it
also affords food for amusement to the ironically inclined.
This review, cursory
and incomplete as it is, of the chief accomplishment of American women in
native fiction, serves to bring out the fact that they have during the last
forty years supplied to our literature an element of great and genuine value;
and that while their productions have of course varied in power and richness,
they have steadily gained in art. How wide the gap between "Hobomok"
and "Ramona"! During the latter half of the period the product gives
no general evidence of limitation; and the writers would certainly be placed,
except for the purposes of this article, among their brother authors, in
classes determined by method, local background, or any other basis of
arrangement which is artistic rather than personal. In exceptional cases a
reviewer perhaps exclaims upon certain faults as "womanish"; but the
cry is too hasty; the faults are those of individuals, in either sex. It is
possible to match them from the work of men, and to adduce examples of women's
work entirely free from them. Colonel Higginson has pointed out that the ivory
miniature method in favor with some of our masculine artists is that of Jane
Austen. Wherein do Miss Sprague's "Earnest Trifler" or "The
Daughter of Henry Sage Rittenhouse" display more salient indications of
sex than works of similar scope by Mr. Henry James?
"The almost entire
disappearance of the distinctively woman's novel" -- that is, the novel
designed expressly for feminine readers, such as "The Wide, Wide
World" and "The Lamplighter" -- has lately been commented upon.
It is to be observed that this species -- chiefly produced in the past by
women, as the Warner sisters, Maria S. Cummins, Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, the
excellent Miss McIntosh -- has become nearly extinct at the very time when
women are supplying a larger proportion of fiction than ever before; and, further,
that the comparatively few "domestic semi-pious" novels, very popular
in late years, have been of masculine production. The original and suggestive,
though perhaps at times over-subtle, work of Mrs. Whitney, thoroughly
impregnated with the New England spirit, and portraying with insight various
phases of girlhood, takes another rank. Whatever may be concluded from the
decadence of fiction, written of women, for women, by women, it is certainly
probable that women will remain, as a rule, the best writers for girls. In
connection with this subject must be mentioned the widely known and appreciated
stories of Louisa M. Alcott, "Little Women" and its successors, which
"have not only been reprinted and largely sold in England, but also translated
into several foreign languages, and thus published with persistent
success." We are told that when "Little Men" was issued
"its publication was delayed until the publishers were prepared to fill
advance orders for fifty thousand copies."
A like popularity is to
be noted of the spirited and artistic "Hans Brinker; or, the Silver
Skates," of Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, which "has had a very large
circulation in America; has passed through several editions in England; and has
been published in French at Paris, in German at Leipsic, in Russian at St.
Petersburg, and in Italian at Rome. . . . The crowning tribute to its
excellence is its perennial sale in Holland in a Dutch edition." No name
in our juvenile literature so "brings a perfume in the mention" as that
of Mrs. Dodge, who for years has been as "the very pulse of the
machine" in the making of that magazine for children, which is not only an
ever new delight, but a genuine educational power.
IN poetry the abundant
work of women during the last half- century shows a development corresponding
to that traced in the field of fiction. As the flood of sentimentalism slowly
receded hopeful signs began to appear -- the rather vague tints of a bow of
poetical promise. The varying verse of Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Kinney, Elizabeth
Lloyd Howell, and Harriet Winslow Sewall represents, in different degrees, a
general advance. The "little vagrant pen" of Frances Sargent Osgood,
as she confessed, "wandered lightly down the paper," but its fanciful
turns had now and then a swift, capricious grace. The poems of Sarah Helen
Whitman, belonging to the landscape school of Bryant, are of marked value, as
are also the deeply earnest productions of Mrs. Anna Lynch Botta, which display
a new distinctness of motive, possibly attributable to the influence of
Longfellow. The same influence is felt in some of the early work of Alice Cary,
whose individual strain of melancholy melody clings to remembrance, its charm
stubbornly outliving our critical recognition of defects due, in great measure,
to over-production. Emily Judson sometimes touched finely the familiar chords,
as in the well-known poem of motherhood, "My Bird." The tender
"Morning Glory" of Maria White Lowell, whose poems are characterized
by a delicate and childlike simplicity, will be remembered.
In 1873 a critic, not
generally deemed too favorable to growths of the present day, recorded the
opinion that there was "more force and originality -- in other words, more
genius -- in the living female poets of America than in all their predecessors,
from Mistress Anne Bradstreet down. At any rate there is a wider range of
thought in their verse, and infinitely more art." For the change first
noted by Mr. Stoddard there is no accounting; the tides of genius are
incalculable. The other gains, like those in fiction, are to be accounted for
partly by the law of evolution working through our whole literature, by the
influence of sounder models and of a truer criticism, and by the winnowing
processes of the magazines; partly, also, by the altered position and improved
education of women in general -- not necessarily of the individual, since
change in the atmosphere may have important results in cases where other
conditions remain unchanged.
The poems of Mrs. Howe
express true womanly aspiration, and a high scorn of unworthiness, but their
strongest characteristic is the fervent patriotism which breathes through the
famous "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The clear, hopeful
"orchard notes" of Lucy Larcom, -- it is impossible to refrain from
quoting Mr. Stedman's perfect phrase, -- first heard long since, have grown
more mellow with advancing years.
The dramatic lyric took
new force and naturalness in the hands of Rose Terry Cooke, and turned fiery in
those of Mrs. Stoddard, whose contemplative poems also have an eminent sad
dignity of style. The fine-spun subjective verse of Mrs. Piatt flashes at times
with felicities, as a web with dewdrops. Many names appear upon the honorable
roll: Mrs. Fields, Mrs. Spofford, -- whose rich nature reveals itself in verse
as in the novel, -- Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, Mrs. Mary Ashley Townsend;
Elizabeth Akers Allen, Julia C. R. Dorr, Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Whitney, Mrs. Dodge,
Mrs. Moulton; Mrs. Thaxter, -- the sea's true lover, who has devoted herself to
the faithful expression of a single phase of natural beauty, -- Mrs. Mary E.
Bradley, Kate Putnam Osgood, Nora Perry, Mary N. Prescott, and Harriet McEwen
Kimball; Mary Clemmer Hudson, Margaret E. Sangster, Miss Bushnell, "Susan
Coolidge," "Howard Glyndon," "Stuart Sterne," Charlotte
Fiske Bates, May Riley Smith, Ella Dietz, Mary Ainge de Vere, Edna Dean
Proctor, the Goodale sisters, Miss Coolbrith, Miss Shinn, "Owen
Innsly," Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Alice Wellington Rollins. There is a
kind of white fire in the best of the subtle verses of "H. H." -- a
diamond light, enhanced by careful cutting. Generally impersonal, the author's
individuality yet lives in them to an unusual degree. We may recognize also in
the Jewish poems of Emma Lazarus, especially in "By the Waters of Babylon,"
and the powerful fourteenth-century tragedy, "The Dance to Death,"
"the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond life." The poems of Edith M. Thomas, with their
exquisite workmanship, mark the high attainment of woman in the mastery of
poetic form, and exhale some breath of that fragrance which clings to the work
of the young Keats. Miss Hutchinson's "Songs and Lyrics" have also
rare quality. The graceful verse of Mrs. Deland has been quick to win the ear
of the public. Louise Imogen Guiney, sometimes straining the voice, has
nevertheless contributed to the general chorus notes of unusual fullness and
strength.
In other branches of
literature, to which comparatively few women have chosen to devote themselves,
an increasing thoroughness is apparent, a growing tendency to specialism. The
irresponsible feminine free lance, with her gay dash at all subjects, and her
alliterative pen name dancing in every melee like a brilliant pennon, has gone
over into the more appropriate field of journalism. The calmly adequate
literary matron of all work is an admirable type of the past, no longer
developed by the new conditions. The articles of the late Lucy M. Mitchell on
sculpture, and of Mrs. Schuyler van Rennselaer on art and architecture; the
historical work of Martha J. Lamb and of the lamented Mary L. Booth, the latter
also an indefatigable translator; the studies of Helen Campbell in social
science; the translations of Harriet Waters Preston -- these few examples are
typical of the determination and concentration of woman's work at the present
day. We notice in each new issue of a magazine the well-known specialists. Miss
Thomas has given herself to the interpretation of nature, in prose as in verse;
"Olive Thorne" Miller to the loving study of bird life. Mrs. Jackson,
the most versatile of later writers, possessed the rare combination of
versatility and thoroughness in such measure that we might almost copy Hartley
Coleridge's saying of Harriet Martineau, and call her a specialist about
everything; but her name will be associated with the earnest presentation of
the wrongs of the Indian, as that of Emma Lazarus with the impassioned defense
of the rights of the Jew.
The just and genial
Colonel Higginson expresses disappointment that woman's advance in literature
has not been more marked since the establishment of the women's colleges.
"It is," he says, "considerable and substantial; yet in view of
the completeness with which literary work is now thrown open to women, and
their equality as to pay, there is room for some surprise that it is not
greater."
The proper fruit of the
women's colleges in literature has, in fact, not yet ripened. It may at first
seem strangely delayed, yet reflection suggests the reasons. An unavoidable
self-consciousness hampers the first workers under a new dispensation. It might
appear at a casual glance that those released from the burden of a retarding
tradition were ready at once for the race, but the weight has only been exchanged
for the lighter burden of the unfamiliar. College-bred women of the highest
type have accepted, with grave conscientiousness, new social responsibilities
as the concomitant of their new opportunities.
Pealing, the clock of Time Has struck the Woman's hour; We hear it on
our knees, wrote Miss Phelps for the
graduates of Smith College ten years ago. That the summons has indeed been
reverently heard and faithfully obeyed, those who have followed the work of the
Association of Collegiate Alumnae can testify. The deed, and not the word,
engages the energy of the college woman of to-day; but as these institutions
grow into the life of our land that life will be everywhere enriched, and the
word must follow in happy time. Individual genius for literature is sure,
sooner or later, to appear within the constantly widening circle of those
fairly equipped for its exercise. It would be idle to expect that the cases in
which native power and an adequate preparation go hand in hand will be
frequent, since they are infrequent among men. The desirable thing was, that
this rare development should be made a possibility among women. It is possible
to-day; some golden morrow will make it a reality. Helen Gray Cone.