The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-05-11
Or WOMEN IN FICTION.
English Novels Will Perish Of In
anition Unless Young Girls
Be Eliminated.
Mr.. Mayo w. Hazeltine's Notable
Article In tho North Amer
lean Review.
rhaokeray Knew the Difference Between
. Woman and a Girl-Noyelists
Cheat the Public.

" Th0Gk0f8y 0n0W inc DiLeTouct AhotWcel
. Woman and a Girl-Novelists
Cheat the Public.
There shines out as the one notable arti
ole Of literary criticism this month-clear
strong and wholesone-Mr. Mayo w. Hazel
tines essay in the North American Review
uron tMarried Women in Fiction" II
would be- supsrfuous to remark that this
country has produced no critic NOR
th~orough-going or more discriminating
than Mr.. Hazeltine. At the outset, Mr.,
Haxsltine declares that the English novel
will perish of hamilton if the young I'M
married girl is to remain its central figure,
and he proceeds to prove by induction that
for some time past most writer's of English
fiction have been cognizant Of this fact and
have been mending their ways.
Mr.. Hazeltine has no quarrel at all with
those who protest against the doctrine in
novel-writing of Fart for arts sake" and
he holds that novels, like newspapers,
should be the subject of strict moral
censorship on the part of q well-ordered
public opinion. But he insists that ignor-
ance should not be COMPOUNDED with wis
dom, and that it is real and essential mo-
rality that is to be guarded and maintained
rather than an avoidance of all those prob
lens and topics into which deep moral
considerations really enter. He maintains
that those things which are mature and
deep in life must in the English novel, as
in the novel of the continent, come to the
foreground in the work of fiction, which il
in fact the modern epic. "Once concede,
however, that the novel, from the didactic
point of view, should deal with the most
spacious and most fruitful tract OF life,
with the deepest problems of mans destiny,
and it becomes patent that unmarried girls
are disqualified for heroines and that the
married woman only can perform the CEN
trail role"
MIR. HaZeltine does not for a moment &C.
cuse great novelists who have written in
the English language of a failure to per-
ceive this fact that mature women rather
than maidsns of eighteen ought, from the
point of view of true art, to figure as the
heroines and central characters in fiction.
But the novelist has been compelled to take
some note of the prejudices and preconcep-
tions of his public. Frenchmen have been
free from conventional restrictions, such
as English and American writer's have had
to face, and 1.-The married woman. there
fore. dominates French fiction" Mr.. HaZ-
eltine cites Balzac, George Sand and o.
tavs Feuillet. "Tolstoi," he adds, "can
draw virgin innocence with extraordinary
softness and tenderness of touch: yet. it is
rather on a face that speaks of struggle and
of anguish that his camera is focused IN
Anna Karenina, by far the greatest of his
works"
In the English novel, MIR. Hazeltine finds
a double o~rigin-one divergent stream
%spFinRing from Richardson and the ideal
ism of PAMELA" and the other from
For the time being, 'Richarson conquered,
and until quite recently it seemed that his
conquest was unmistakable." Mr.. Hazel
tine quotes Thackerav as saying that mo
Englishman since Fielding has dared to
depict life as it is" Thackeray, we are
told, was obliged to take the English novel
as the public and publishers had cramped
it. and make the best of it. He could not
afford to attempt a library revolution. But
he knew the difference between a woman
and a girl.
Other English novelists, Mr.. Hazeltine
says, have been disposed to cheat the pub
lie, while they dared not confront, by
vas and labelling them young girls, to lull
for instance, Flora McIvor,saDiaua Yer
non, and shat lovely daughter of
sorrow in R~edgauntlet" are passed
of on US as twenty. Mr.. Hazel
tide denies their youth and declares they
were 80 at least. And passing from Scott
to George Eliot he AYERS that the same is
true of Romola, who is far too deeply versed
in life's philosophy for the years her author
has assigned to her. 'It is plain" says Mr..
Hazeltine, ''that she had really lived as
long and seen as much as Dante's Beatrice
or Petraroh's Laura, both of whom, it may
behove US to remember, were married" In
her later works George Eliot outgrew the
fault, as Dorothea in MiddIemarch, and
Gwendolen in Daniel Deronda sufficiently
indicate. If she had written another novel,
Mr.. Hazeltine believes her artistic emanci-
patton from the false English convention
alitics would have been complete. He halls,
in the latest story of George Meredith, now
appearing in the Fortniehtly Review, the
advent of this new era of English freedom.
I'm this novel it is not the maiden futter-
ing, inquisitiye at life's half-open door, but
the woman who has lived aud suffered, that
starts forth beneath the strongest strokes
of the vivifyina brush"
In England for some time to come, Mr..
HaZeltine believes. the new novel which
shall deal more frankly and fru1tfully with
life will continue to be written by men.
London has SO many young man of cultiva-
tion and of social experience who possess
the necessary leisure and incentive to write,
and whose knowledge of life and society
gives them the material with which to deal,
that they will doubtless furnish q major
share of the output Of fiction. Mr.. Hazel.
tine hints that they may fall short from
only one point of view-the moral. He
does not believe, however, that a Saxon
hand would ever dabble in the foul corrup,
ton which seems to be the native element
of certain Parisians. Further, he holds il
to be "a deeply interesting and admirable
fact that the preparation of suof
offences seems to be impossible fol
a woman" in America we have many
women novelists. And MIR. Hazeltin'
holds it "a good augury for the cleanness
wholesomeness and sanity of American
prose fiction, when it shall undertake tha'
larger and ~profounder treatment of life
which is undoubtedly impending,' tina,
there is nothing to be feared from the por
trayal of life and society by the pen o
American women. II is not to America,
men, upon the whole, in Mr.. Hazeltine'
opinion. that we are TO look for our bes
and truest fiction.
MIR. Hazeltiness reasoning and criticism
all lead up to the conclusion that in tn
United States the married woman is hence
forth to be the most fruitful theme aut
most conspicuous figure in the importan
fiction of society, and also that it is Tia
married woman who is by all odds hes
equipped to write such fiction. He PFC
ceeds to ~analyze as the fulnllment of thi
prophecy Il series OF novels of Julien Gor
don, now generally understood t
be a woman" We may not attempt to fol
low him in his review of these recent novel