Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1882-07-14
SOME FEMALE WRITER'S.

SOME FEMALE WRITER'S.
And the Books They Have Written.
tFrom the Literary worldl
Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, who died il
1856, is now, though still much read
wanting somewhat in public estimation
Of Northern birth and education, sh,
lived for many years in the South, ant
Southern life has furnished material fo
her plots. 1t is amusing now to read hel
apogetics, invariably introduced, for
the peculiar institution" But at one
time she had many admirers, both Nortl
and South, who may remember the en
thusiasm of callow youth over her Lin
da, or the Young Pilot of the Belle
Creole" 1t is said that $4,000 copies OF
her writings were sold in three years but
at present it is hard to comprehend this
liking for her commonplaces, her roman
ticism of the Augusta ]. Evans school,
her now meaningless pictures of the
benefcence of the Patriarchal system, her
heroines of "aurora- -borealian counte-
nance" as she has it somewhere, and her
tiresome but spotless heroes, all of them
sans pour, sans reprOchc, sans every
thing in fact. Her merits are negative,
for she is not ungramatical, and there is
nothing debasing in her plots. She may
be fairly ranked below Southworth and
Mrs Stephens, and put about on par
with Mrs. Dupuy. Girls of sixteen and
upwards still read her best remembered
books 1.-The Planters Northern Bride, p"
Ernest Linwood, "Courtship and Mur-
riage," Glove After Marriage, "and Lin
da." Perhaps the fact that many of her
publications are in novelette, form may
explain the growing GOODNESS, for it is ad-
mitted that the day of the novelette, is
gone.
Mrs. Emma ID. T.. N. SOWthNyOrth.
The austere reader. who of course is
acquainted with the famous Mrs. South
worth only by hearsay, may object to see
her name in reputable journal of criti-
cism. She is wont to be deprecated in
public and devoured much in private, as
the continual replenishing Of all her
books requisite in large libraries suifici-
emily attests. From 1S49, the year of her
first successful venture, up to 1872, a
complete set of her writings numbers
thirty-fve volumes, and she has pub
lished since. To speak in detail of the
productions of this female Lope dc Vega
Is impossible, indeed it is unnecessary,
for her devoted admirers admit that TO
read one is to read all, and little else ap-
parently. Understanding well the crav-
ing for what is sensual and morbid in
fiction, Mrs. Southworth, by skilful use
of the fascination of crime, and by sys-
tematic introduction of horror as an ele-
ment of literary construction, has man.
aged to cater so successfully to certain
tastes that she stands easily at the head
of this class of the trashy school. In her
later work she seems to have regretted
her earlier faults, to which she may have
been driven by particularly pathetic
experience in authorship. In "Ishmael,"
one of her last, she founds her plot upon
facts in the life of William Wort, and has
produced a story Of no mean merit. 1T
is said that she frankly admits her own
failings, but claims that she has been
accustomed to draw upon actual life for
material. The fidelity to facts is best
shown in her "Widow's Son." Her style
is clear, and she tells her story directly
but the reader must accustom himself to
sudden breaks, as when. for instance,
in "The Changed Bride" he finds an in
terval of four hundred and two pages be-
tween one sentence and the next consecu-
tive one. Judged by their popularity
Mrs. Southworth's principle stories are
''The Changed Brides" "The Brides
Fate" "The Curse of Clifton" also
known under the title of "Fallen Pride, :"
and "The Gypseys Prophecy"
Mrs. stephens.
Readers of Mrs. Southworth are gener-
llly readers of Mrs. Stephens, whose
works, filling at least fourteen stout vol
nmes, are thought by some to be of too
little excitable a nature to supply to nn
eager public without restraint. Consid-
cred generally less desirable writer than
Mrs. Southworth, she, like the latter, has
relied for her success upon the misdoings
Of humanity-and humanity always likes
to hear of its own shortcomings. Most
chooses for heroes and
heroines the favOrites of fortune,
lords and ladies of high degree, who live
in manorial halls, sit on plush, and dine
of ancestral plate-all of which is pleas
ing to the populace; but Mrs. Stephens
stoops little lower than this, and does
best when telling of domestic ways and
Of humble people. In her ablest per-
formance, Fashion and Famine" is
more than common description of early
in tina markets of New York.
Yet how much better Zola has done this
same thing in his "Venture de Paris.
Other of her more readable stories are
''The Rejected Wife, "Bertha's Engage
ment, ",rhe Curse of Gold," married
in Haste" and "The Old Countess" 1t
is hardly necessary to say that titles like
these decide the fate of sensational books,
fully as much as any merit or demerit
contained Within the covers.
Eliza A. Dupuy.
Duyckinck in his comprehensive Soy
clop@dia OF American Literature" has
not seen fit to include tine name of Miss
Dupuy. If favor with her readers is the
only test of excellence, she is the equal
of Mrs. Southworth but let any one
meply skim the many pages of one Of her
poorly reconstructed, loose jointed plots,
and he shall echo the Greek sentiment,
"a big book is big evil" The lack OF
spontaneous humor, or of anything ap-
to natural conversation, is
noticeable in all of these writer's; but in
dullness. Miss Dupuy stands
in the forefront of the profession. Per-
haps this somberness is needful Us fit
setting for plots thick with the horrors of
bigamy, and poison. AS speoi-
men of her careless style, there is scene
in "The Discarded Wife"-a conversation
between two housekeepers, which begins
in the vernacular of the Middle States,
develops into that of the South, and
ends in the broad dialect OF the planta-
tion negro. Her best story is undoubted-
ly "The Huguenot Exiles," in which she
relates. the fortunes of her own family.
"The Discarded Wife," "The Cancelled
Will, "The Hidden SIM" and "All For
Love" are the striking titles of her most