St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-04-20
MEMS WOMEN IN FICTION.
an Interesting Question Discussed at
the Sof.osis Club
Correspondence n. Y. World.


she looked into fiction for a woman she coulC
one who could appreciate and understand
she turned always to novel written by
woman. Men did not fairly represent WON
en- in fiction. She had looked over her bool
shelves,kS She had gone back to the begin
ming. FAKE Richardson's Pamela; or Vir
tue Rewarded" It was novel that an EN-
inent clergyman had commended for thu
reading Of the female sex from his pulpit
brute in manners and morals, rake, had
prosecuted the fair and virtuous Pamela
fairly out of life with his attentions. He wa!
a villain, who tried every art in his power t.
lead her astray. When he found he could
not do that the brute made up his mind tt
sacrifice himself and marry her. He offered
himself to her. Any delicate minded WON
an of spirit and culture would have spurnet
him with horror, but this virtuous Pamela
kissed the brute's hand gratefully and hoped
she would be able to ''polsh her mind" til
she would be equal to and worthy of him
What a heroine that was
In the older novels and some modern ones
the Englishman who writes fiction seems Uc
believe that none of the female sex are
equal to taking care Of their own virtue. A
Frenchman has the same idea, especially as
far as married women are concerned. The
general underlying theory of Frenchmen who
write is that the only women who are quite
beyond temptation is an old maid who has
passed the summer of life, or girl OF sixteen
in book muslin.
There were speakers, too: who to ok the
other side of the question valiantly, and de-
ciared that men novelists-a few men novel
ists-at any rate, had given the word noble
specimens of woman as she is-good, bad and
Indifferent. Walter SCOTS heroines were in
stanced, among others. Then again we have
to thank Dickens for the most thoroughly re-
spectacle woman in English literature. In a
rafting three minute speech one brilliant
woman said that if men in their novels did
not represent women fairly, women would
better set in and live in such away as to give
these faulty masculines some higher ideals to
go by. She thought those ladies who believed
men novelists were unjust to women should
liye up to their blue china, IN short.
1t would not be possible in these limits to
give a report of the full discussion. 1t was
mostly taken part in by brilliant, cultured
women who knew well how to flash the blade
of wit and argument. Many of them had
minds admirably stored with facts. They
knew whereof they spoke and these had great
advantage. The acquisition Of good hard
facts is mental discipline beyond compari-
son. If the men novelists whose female
characters are limited to the babies and the
Mandy pambies could have heard Sorosis that
day, in all seriousness they mrght have got
their ideas Of the sex shaken if not recon-
structed.
The weight of opinionI am bound to say,
was against the men novelists. With the ma
jority of the speakers there was a settled con-
viction that when it came to seeing and paint
ing women as they are, male writers were
lacking.
One graceful, white-haired woman, with a
sweet voice, reminded US that the most re-
pulsive creation in all literature was repre-
scented as a woman-the character Of ''Sin in
Milton's paradise Lost" So it is. Milton
was an old crumudgeon when it came to the
female sex.
The same lady thought it pity our Amer
lean men novelists, so called, could make
no better pictures of women than Yankee
girl who does not know how to behave her
self, i'll Europe with a silly, ignorant pushing
stood, and slurred by their own country
men. Let Mr.. Henry James make note of
it.
If there is anything in mind-reading the
ears of Mr.. w. D. Howells must have burned
last Monday afternoon. They ought to. Is
there really female character in one of his
stories that rises above the wishy-washy, the
artificial and commonplace? One Sorosian
thnnnbt fhat whom en-. m
ing their own living nobly and successfully
to-day, when they have fully solved the prob
lem of work, it was pity Mr.. Howells could
not have selected better specimen of work
ing woman for his heroine than Helen in
''A Woman's Reason.'' Why did he not?
Mr. w. D. Howells, that Ohio man grated
upon a Boston tree, will please rise and an
swer. t-la
One speaker objected that men novelists
made woman always the slave to her affec
tions. But in this, perhaps, men novelists
are nearer the mark than she thought. Wo
men are mostly the slaves of their affections.
They ought not to be, but they are. Who
never saw mother pet and spoil and deny
herself the very food that goes into her mouth
for a great, ill-mannerly lubber of boy who
didn't even thank her for it? l have said it a
hundred times, and here say it again, when
women cultivate their brains instead of their
emotions, they will be no such fools as that.
But men certainly do not represent wo
men fairly in fiction, as a rule. Mems wo
men lack strength. With many masculine
writer's the female characters have no sort of
individuality. They are mere pegs to hang
the thread of the story upon. Where they
represent woman with any strength, it is
on the bad side. She is bag or murderess
or conspirator. That is the accusation /,
quite apart from Sorosis, make against
the whole kit of men fiction
writers. Englishmen started the fashion.
OF their good women the young ones are
childish and namby- PANTY, the elder ones
are placid old tabbies or angling mammas.
The mild, stupid old cat. who goes to sleep
on the sofa while the young woman in the
case is made love to, is quite as much Tx
ture in the English novel as the rector and
fox-hunting squire are.
To particularize: Charles Reade's hero
ines in character are mostly pretty waiter
girls. Dickens are either goody goods,
carved out of Eastwood who stay where they
are put, or laughable caricatures. fthey de-
velop any powers it is generally in low life
or bad life, like Lizzie HeXam and Nancy
Sykes. Strength was evidently an unlady-like
attribute, in the mind of Dickens. Thacker-
avis women were either fools or knaves.
There is quantity of knavery among them
too One woman stands out above the
dreary level like a star shining upon des-
ert. That woman is our American Haw
thorne's Hester in the 'Scarlet Letter"
Here was woman for you! Making allow
ance for changing scenes and circumstances,
Hester yes, we may dare to say it, Hester
is more the real, living, breathing woman as
nature made her, with all her steel-like
strength and her weakness, her measureless
capabilities and the iron fates that work
against her than the creation of any other
man. Hawthorne alone of men novelists
looked into a woman's soul and wrote what