THE COURIER
HEROINES OF THE PERIOD.
There aro fashions in heroines, as in bonnets and bric-a-brac, and
thoy corno and go according to some queer occult logic which is one
of the mysteries of the act of fiction. The novelists themselves do
not know why they vary the prevailing typo in different periods.
It is a process of evolution that produces changing results, that
substitutes one style for another, with curious effects of contrast
and surprise. But there is method in it, notwithstanding, and its
relation to tho general alterations of thought and taste in the world
is no less certain than it is interesting and significant. The succes
sive heroines, that is to say, have a meaning apart from the stories
in which they figure. They stand in a 6ens9 for contemporary in
tellectual and moral conditions, and correspond in a readily per
ceptible degree to familiar opinions and tendencies. There is always
a reason for their being, it is easy to see, if wo look at them in tho
proper light. The elements that enter into their composition are
not drawn from remote or imaginary sources, but from tho liff. .of
the time. They may be wanting in definite fidelity to nature, in
detailed accuracy of resemblanco to people whom wo meet; but jj
far as their basic properties are concerned, wo can account for them
by deduction or inference from existing circumstances.
The heroines of the present period aro unlike those of any former
one. They are not of uniform pattern, to be sure, in their individual
caprices and idiosyncracies. but they aro all the same in general
scope and suggestion. To distinguish them from preceding ones,
they may be cajled neurotic. They are at the nienyof their nerves.
Some of them are quite intelligent, most of them are handsome and
a few of them are influenced by sane and creditable motives. As a
rule, however, they are light-minded, eccentric, and more or lets
demoralized. They have extravagant views, they are consecrated
to missions, they pride themselves upon their independence, when
they are only audacious and hysterical. They are mostly presented
by women writers: and singularly enough, they mostly turn out to
be failures, unless they are saved by sacrificing their cherished
sentiments and purposes to old-fashioned ideas of the duties and
opportunities of their sex. Not one of them succeeds in living up to
her peculiar philosophy, or remaining true to her boasted emanci
pation from conventional shackles of belief or behavior. In every
instance there is a final collapse of the original structure, and the
pretty heroine is humbled by tho irony of fate.
Mrs. Ward's Marcclla Boyce is above the average in mental equip
ment and moral character, but she is not different from the rest in
the matter of vanity of opinion, mistaken conceptions of life and
ultimate surrender to the influences that she strives for years to
overcome. She is absorbed in a dream of reform without knowing
how to bring it true. Her mind is warped by wrong education and
association, and the emotional currents of her nature are diverted
from straight and wholesome channels into crooked and morbid
ones. She accepts an animal and worthy man, not because she
loves him, but because he has wealth and position, and she hopes
thus to gain jxjwer for the promotion of her crude designs of charity
and philanthropy. This does not bring her happiness, but disaster.
In a fit of anger over the refusal of her prospective husband to sign
a petition for the pardon of a murderer in whom she has taken
sympathetic interest, she breaks tho engagement, llees from home,
and becomes a nurse in a London hospital. Experience teaches her
the folly of her course, the weakness of her supposed wisdom, and
she returns with her dream dispelled, to tho arms of her waiting and
forgiving lover, and to adopt the mission of a wife and mother as the
best service and highest blessing of womanhood.
Another spoiled darling of society is Dodo Vano in tho story that
has her first name for a title. She is handsome, dashing, heartless,
with a habit of dramatizing everything, as well of shocking people
with her blunt and bitter cynicism. It is her delight to scoff at
serious matters, and to proclaim that she is disillusioned and un
romantic "Morals don't come into tho question of social inter
course at all," she says; "I particularly dislike some of the cardinal
virtues and the only reason for associating with anybody is that
one takes pleasure in their company." Lord Chcsterford proposes
to her, and she accepts him for his title and his estites. "I don't
elevate matrimony into a sacrament," she tells one of her compan
ions; "it is a contract for mutual advantage. Tho husband gives
wealth, position, and all that, and the wife gives him a housekeeper
and heirs to his property. Think of all tho people who marry for
love and got eternally tired of each other afterward; they can't keep
it up, you know." She" soon tires of wedded life, even without love,
and plans an elopement with a former suitor; but the husband con
veniently dies, and she becomes engaged to the man with whom she
was going to run away. Ho Boon objects to her receiving visits
from a certain Russian prince, whereupon she informs him that she
will do as she pleases; and tho,, next time he calls to see her ho
ascertains that she has gone to Paris, presumably with the princo
and there the story leaves her.
The heroine of "A Yellow Aster," Gwendolen Waring, is a girl of
robust physical health and a diseased and distorted mind. When
lovers aro attracted to her by her beauty and brightness she says
they aro only botanists yearning for a rare flower. "Love is such a
mere name to me," she declares; "It seems Buch a collapsable bubb
ly thing, to put to such feeble uses." In the course of time sho
marries Sir'Humphrey Strange, telling him plainly that she is doing
it as an experiment. "I like new sensations, I am curious," sho in
forms him Tho experiment proves to be a doleful disappointment,
which reaches a climax of mockery and self-reproach when she dis
covers that she is soon to became a mother. "It is ghastly, it is de
gradation,' sho exclaims, "feeling as I do towards Humphrey.
-Pdllir of the shame of women who have children out of the pale of
marriage; it's nothing to tho shame of those who have children and
don't love. Nothing not God's law nor man's makes marriage
sacred but perfect love." A separation ensues; and then, after the
child is born there comes the reconciliation. Maternity teaches the
heroine what love is, and she kneels at her husband's feet in
humble confession of evil done in ignorance, but leading up through
great tribulations into unutterable joy and the prattling lips of a
little child decree that henceforth and forever these -two shall bo
one flesh.
Turning to the ''Ships That Pass in tho Night," we meet Bernar
dino Holme, who has tubercles on her lungs and several crotchets
in her brain, including to write a book. Life has alway been a
solemn thing with her, a discipline of study, toil, lonesomeness and
lovelessness. She is self-reliant, somewhat conceited, with a thin
and pale visage and very bright eyes that seem to be burning them
selves awaj. At the health resort where sho is stopping she falls
in with a sort of a melancholy Jaques who is known as "the dis
agreeable man," and their morbid conversations make up most of
tho story. Thoy talk of various things always in a pessimistic
style, with occasional flashes of sardonic humor and their general
conclusion is that the present life is a failure, and the future life a
fancy that may or may not bo worth entertaining. "We go on build
ing our bridge between life and death, each for himself," tho girl
says. When we see that it is not strong enough, we break it down
and build another. Wo watch other people building their bridges,
and we imitate; or criticise, or condemn them. But as the time
goes on, we learn not to interfere, that one bridge is probably as
good as another, and the greatest value of them all is in tho building
of them." Tho boon of love comes to this peculiar couple at last, but
neither acknowledges it to the other; and the girl dies, and tho man
goes to the mountains, taking her photograph with him, to continue
his bridge building, "as we all do, whether consciously or un
consciously, and meanwhile the years pass."
It is easy to say of these different heroines that their exact coun
ter parts are not to bo found in actual life; but tho materials out of
which they are made can be found there. They aro the embodi
ment of random energies, floating emotions, rife opinions and pro
clivities that are plainly visible in the current proceedings of society.
Wo are living in an age of exceptional nervousness, and tho interests
and processes of culture, reform and progress are saturated with
hysteria, hypochondria and neurasthenia. It is a period of unpre
cedented mental activity, of daring investigation and analysis, of
spreading dissent and incredulity with regard to established theories
and institutions. All the achievements of tho past are being put to
new tests, and nothing eseapes the arrows of criticism with which
the old light are darkend. It is the fashion to be skeptical, to pick
flawsin the systems of faith and practice, to insist upon tho necessity
of rectification and re-adjustment in every direction and relation.
The virtue of restraint and repose, once considered an essential
part of wisdom, is now practically unKnown, and in place of it we
have a feverish curiosity and audacity that 6ees nothing fit to be
venerated and preserved, but demands changes so numerous and so
radical that they imply in the aggregate a complete impeachment of
the philosophy of civilization. Henby King.
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