Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1892-05-26


Not like to like but like in difference,
Yet in the long years ltker must they grow;
The man be more of woman. she of man;
RE gain in sweetness aud in moral height
Nor lose the resting that throw the world
She mental breadth. nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the child Ike IN the larger mind;
Till at last she set herself to man,
like perfect music unto noble Words
'The woman Of large capacity can sell
dom rise beyond the absorption of ideas;
her physical conditions refuse to support
the energy required for spontaneous ac-
fiyity; the votaic-pi is not great enough
b produce capitalization phantasms OF
great ideas float through her mind, but
she has not the spell that will arrest them
and give her fixity." This was the opin-
ion of George Eliot expressed before she
had refuted its wisdom by her first novel.
But there have been painfully few re-
fRtations of it in this or any century, and
now that woman is responsible for 30
Large proportion in bulk of the printed
matte. OF today, it is even easier than in
George Eliot's time to study her limita-
lions, and with so much data it should be
easier to reach a conclusion. The literary
work Of women is no longer an "infant
industry" in need of especial protection.
We are as far from the day when
woman was smiled at and flattered for
pretty little effort, as from the time when
Queen Christina wrote remonstratingly
80 the authoress OF "Callimachus :" "But
YOU, who they assure me, are beautiful
and agreeable girl, are you not ashamed
to be SO learned? ?" Perhaps the surest
sign OF woman's advance in this field is
that she is now seriously compared to
man even If it is to her disfavor; there is
an admission OF an approximation to
equality in comparison. Would not it
be better if women candidly admitted
that there is sex in literature; if she
allowed herself to forget that ia writing
she is competing with man, and made
herself remember that when woman
tries to do mans work she accom-
plishes only second-rate results? In
literature, as in life, there is work that
a. woman can do best by virtue of her be-
ing woman, niche into which she per-
fectly fits; whole class OF experience be-
longs to her as birthright OF which a
man has knowledge only at second hand.
III instead of trying to report over mans
shoulder through his peep-hole, she aban-
dons his standpoint, looks at it squarely,
as woman. leaving the traditions that
man has formed for himself out OF ac-
count might not she at last accomplish
something free from the blemish OF imita-
sion? Heine says that when women
write "they have always one eye on the
paper and the other on man." and this
rs true in different sense from the one
which he meant. Imitation has ever
been the leading string Of the weak who
fear to walk alone. When women dare
A4To write of those things that they know
and tell of those things that they have
seem" we may hope for work from them
saf an individual and abiding value. This
would scarcely restrict woman's field of
choice, as she might still view the world
out would keep her from the error of try
ing to describe those matters that by the
mature of hei environment are entirely
beyond her knowledge or sympathy.
Charles Egbert Craddock's first novel
dealt largely with gamblers and their
talk in gambling bells. If she had told
what woman sees and knows from the
inside Of a gambler, her story would have
been new story; now it is forgotten.
Mrs. Humphrey Ward is perhaps the
most talented woman writer OF today,
and yet what thoughtful reader has ever
laid down David Grieve' with any other
than a sense of disappointment and vexa-
tion? There is enough talent displayed
in that book to have built Sc veral modest
regulations upon; but the talent has been
so unwisely spent, that this later book
has gone far toward dispelling the hope
for better things that Robert Elsmere'
awakened. The whole trouble rose from
a lack Of recognition upon the authors
part of her own limitations. The char
acter of David Grieve is interesting just
SO long as he is represented as man
with ambitions, aspirations and love af-
fairs but when he is treated as type,
when he is charged with more meaning
as "a growth" than his personality will
bear then he becomes tiresome prig,
L i,a s,aoi1t ninca Of tlaaoriac Who ,.-ould