In old days the fashion of novelists was to conduct their principal characters through a series of vicissitudes to the matrimonial altar, and there to take leave of them in the assured conviction that they would be happy ever after. Whether the assurance were genuine or simulated, it at least obviated the necessity of exploring and illustrating marital relations. Sir Walter Scott, we think, defended it broadly on the ground that presumably the fortunes of the couple had become, by virtue of the new tie, serene and prosperous, and in consequence profoundly uninteresting to the reader. But of recent years these matrimonial relations have received a good deal of attention at the hands, we believe more especially, of lady novelists, not always in a way which is either amusing or instructive. There is no lightness of touch, no sobriety of common-sense, in their mode of handling a delicate and complicated subject. After all, the matrimonial yoke is one which people are free to adopt or eschew at their pleasure. The mass of people seem to regard it as attractive, or at least preferable to the greater freedom and less responsibility which its rejection ensures. It is more frequently than not adopted with enthusiasm, and the great majority soon discover, with no particular sense of disappointment, that it is a give-and-take sort of business, and that necks are more easily fitted to the yoke when that is recognised. If connubial relations are preferred by the novelist, they are capable of giving rise to all sorts of interesting complications and perplexities which all or most wearers of, or aspirants to, the yoke would gladly follow to some sensible solution. But is it not an offence against the art of novel-writing to present this institution of matrimony, which after all is very general and somewhat prosaic in its interest, in a repulsive, extravagant, and impracticable guise? If it is, we must say that, according to our limited observation, it is lady novelists who are the chief offenders. They occasionally approach the subject of contemplated or actual marriage relations in a spirit, as it seems to us, of marked hostility, tinged with the venomous conviction that their own sex has always the collar which chafes. They delight in allowing the wife to disregard the yoke entirely and kick over the traces with more or less violence, and in depicting the husband as submitting to a fate which anyhow is good enough for him, with helpless and uncomplaining fortitude. The male sex, downtrodden as it may be, views these matters differently. "Richie," said Sir Mungo Malagrowther, on a memorable occasion, "it seems to me that this bride of yours is like to be master and mair in the conjugal state." "If she abides by words, Sir Mungo," answered the undaunted Richie, " I thank Heaven I can be as deaf as any one; and if she comes to dunts, I have twa hands to paik her with." Sir Richie Moniplies was a man of sense and discretion, and lady novelists might learn from him that the resources of civilisation are not quite so exhausted as they are apt to fancy.
As an illustration of the extreme disregard of probability, and of almost fanatical hostility to the restraints of a position voluntarily assumed by both parties, we might instance 'The Heavenly Twins,' first published some years ago by Mrs Sarah Grand. [ . . . ] We are not sure that some of the incidents in Mrs Ward's new book1 are not equally fantastic. Nor is that result to be avoided if you start with the notion that one of the spouses, whose fortunes are described, is irresponsible and the other helpless. For ourselves, we took it up with some interest, having a lively recollection of the proceedings of a certain Marcella, whom we have always regarded as the worst behaved young lady in respectable fiction. Her vagaries, however, were before marriage, ere there was any yoke to disregard or traces to kick over. She was engaged to the young heir of a certain Lord Maxwell, in a family far above her in rank. But having conceived a violent antipathy to the game laws and an equally violent sympathy with their unfortunate victim, who had under their influence deviated into murder, she stormed at her lover, and afterwards at his grandfather, in his own house, in a way which would in a former generation have led to the ducking-stool, and in these more complaisant days would at least have prevented his having the pleasure of detaining her any longer in his presence or of welcoming her in the future. The lover, although a man of capacity and a Member of the House of Commons (a most henpecked assembly in the eyes of lady novelists), is without any apparent mission in life but to ride under her chariot wheels, bears her objurgations with exemplary meekness, and is scornfully dismissed. Finally, when the young lady returns to her senses, she sends him off to a table at the other end of the room, on which is a slip of paper whereon she has written a word or two of explanation and a gracious permission to renew his engagement, whereat he is serenely delighted and jubilantly thankful. The young lady has it all her own way, in a fashion which seems remarkably attractive to lady novelists. The explanation is that he is a candidate for future conjugal endearments, and will submit to anything so long as a shadow of hope remains. Even while she is rating his grandfather, "what absorbed him mainly was the wild desire to kiss the dark hair, so close below him, alternating with the miserable certainty that for him at that moment to touch, to soothe her, was to be repulsed." Contrast this imbecile sentiment with a real wooing between a real man and woman in real life. William the Conqueror, to take an extreme case in an opposite direction, was confronted by some nonsensical shilly-shally, to which Mrs Ward attributes importance. He did not trouble himself about his Matilda's hair or whether he dared touch it, or soothe her. He rolled her over and over in the mud. And Matilda, convinced by his procedure that he meant business and was a man of mettle, submissively yielded. Mrs. Ward's notion of the divine flame is that of damp straw smouldering in a dog-kennel; and her notion of masculine character is crude, involving the negation of every particle of virile force. [ . . .]
| Endnotes | ||
| 1 | The Marriage of William Ashe, by Mrs. Humphry Ward. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1905. | Return |