The Portland daily press., 1882-05-03
The True Heroine.

The heroine of fiction at present is often any
thing but good girl in fact, regular thorough
going naughty one is rather favorite with many
of our novelists. 'vixen' was not at all agood
| girl nor was ssMadcap Violet" nor Miss Thack-
eray's lovable Elizabeth and the stories
might almost be counted by the dozen In whicn
the first two or three chapters get the heroine
into some wild scrape, for which she suffers all
her life afterward. We are fortunate when the
scrape is an innocent one, and nothing worse can
be said of the heroine than that she does not
know how ordinary well brought up women are
accustomed to behave.
Among all these different types, old and new,
with their endless varieties and gradatons, there
must be something in common, which makes us
really interested in the fate of one woman
plain or protty-while-we are quite Indifferent
about that of another II is SO in real life.
Some women strike us at once as interesting;
| people talk to them with meaning; things hap
pen to them; everywhere they form CENTRE
| and their presence is felt These are herolnes;
| and when an author succeeds in transpantlng
| one into his pages his story breathes and moves
| But what makes them SO? Not always either
| virtue or beauty, certainly, nor even iorce OIL
character; but certain emotlonalness, Wnicn
| they eau communicate W Othoio' Ai0J AooA
| keenly, and they are always feeling or ready to
| feel. They are never torpid or absorbed IN ey-
| ervday matters; for however they may be occu-
| pied in snch things, they respond 80 much more
readily TO call of feeling that their minds are
| never too much dulled to reflect vivid image.
| If they are sympathetic they are the most de-
| liehtful of confidants, for their sympathy is
warm and interested, and you know that you
| cannot bore them with your affairs, any more
| than by reading them story. Ii they are self
| ish they generally succeed in imposing upon
| others their own sense of the supreme impor-
tance of what they are feeling, and command
| unlimited sympathy and allegiance. Always
| their natures are strung to high pitch, and
| when others come into harmony with them, it
| is when they are wound up beyond their wont.
| At suchculminatiDg points, when life is fullest
| and nerves most highly charged, events are like
| ly to happen, hidden feelings blossom like the
| aloe once for all, and imprisoned words spring
| out Thus it is that heroines are made and ro-
mances begin; for they carry not only the hazel
| twig which tells where the springs OF emotlon
| lie hid but the serpent-rod which calls them
| forth.
Many people-both men and wOmen-in whom
this peculiar faculty is not strongly enough de-
| Aeloped to attract attention, and make events
| cluster round their path, yet are heroes and he
| roines in themselves by dint of cultured I'M
| agination. Looking at the occurrences and in
evitable changes of their own life with an inter-
est and with an eye trained to see events IN Or
| derly sequence or graceful combination, the in
| cidents group themselves picturesquely, the
feelings that rose with them cling to them, keep
ing for each its peculiar savor-distinct, though
| growing faint; and life, which seems very COM
| monpace viewed from outside, is to its subject
a story constantly read, but always to be contin-
| ued.