The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1865-07-14
Jtl1st&IIaneous.
For The Agis and Mtelligencer.
Woman Authors.

1t is a common remark that woman has
an instructive faculty by which she at
once forms correct views in regard TO hu-
man nature-Providence providing her
with the power of learning, at single
glance, those phases of character which
man learns to recognize only after long and
laborious observation. The fallacy of this
tavorite idea is shown by the few good
sketches of character that have emanatcd
from the mind of woman. 1t is only me-
cessary to glance at the literary produc-
tons of woman authors to be convinced
of this fact. Look at Miss Edgeworth's
novels, and you must see that she repre-
sents human beings as they should be,
not as they really are. Her characters
are merely statues of vice and virtue-not
the speaking portraits of the men and
women we meet in daily life; while of
Miss Birney, Miss Evans, Mrs. Greg, and
a host of Others, may be said, that their
Williams are burlesques, their heroes and
heroines saints, not mortals, and their mi
nor characters ridiculous nonentities.
Now glance at the writings of the stern
er sex. Notice how Shakespeare paints
his lesser fgures-with no less an artistic
hand and with no less correctness than he
represents his central and prominent char
acters. Jessica and Lorenzo are as per-
feet portraitures as are those of Portia
and 'Shylock. Snug and his fellow ac-
tors interest as well as Oberon and Tita-
MIA. But we will not illustrate our theory
by such an example; for, as Lord Jeffrey
observes "He alone pours out from the
richness Of his own mind, without effort
or restraint, and contrives to intermingle
with the play of all the passions, and the
vulgar course of this worlds affairs, with.
out deserving for an instant the proper
business Of the scene, or appearing to
pause and disress from the love of orna-
ment and need of repose ~
But compare the greatest of woman
novelists with Sir Walter Scott compare
his delineation of Puritan with that of
any from the pen of woman. We seem,
as we read Scott, to see those arch.hypo-
critics, with their can't names; with their
preference for the law of Moses to the
law of the Redeemer; with their nasal
twang and blasphemous use of holy names
upon all occasions; with their scof of
feverential observances. No woman could
give such a portrait of that desecrater of
the Holy Church-Oliver Cromwell-as
is given in "Rob Roy" Yet Sir Walter
Scott does not allow his feelings to carry
him over the bounds Of truth and justice
as woman could not help doing.
we will not, however, multiply in
stances to show the superiority of man
over woman in the delineation of charac.
ter. This is his province, and woman
would do we'll not to enter the lists against
him. She is not a creature of judgment.
Her feelings direct her pen, and she will
ever delineate mankind as~they appear
through these mists. Hence, we have no
woman novelists worth the reading In
other departments of literature, woman
keeps in the "front rank - but in the
delineation of character, she forms "the
AFFECT rear" AS moral instructor, the
purity and tenderness of her heart makes
her superior to man. We can think of
no book written by man that can rival
Mrs. Sigourney's "Letters to Young La
Dies" in the loftiness of its sentiments,
the grace of its style, and the truth and
purity of its doctrines. In lyrical po-
etry woman are the equals of men, as
feeling, not judgment, is most requisite
here. Few pieces of poetry can compare
TO- that Of the Hon. Mrs Norton, called