Characteristics of Women Part 3

MEDON.

Do you remember that some of the commentators of Shakspeare have thought it inc.u.mbent on their gallantry to express their utter contempt for the scene between Richard and Lady Anne, as a monstrous and incredible libel on your s.e.x?

ALDA.

They might have spared themselves the trouble. Lady Anne is just one of those women whom we see walking in crowds through the drawing-rooms of the world--the puppets of habit, the fools of fortune, without any particular inclination for vice, or any steady principle of virtue; whose actions are inspired by vanity, not affection, and regulated by opinion, not by conscience: who are good while there is no temptation to be otherwise, and ready victims of the first soliciting to evil. In the case of Lady Anne, we are startled by the situation: not three months a widow, and following to the sepulchre the remains of a husband and a father, she is met and wooed and won by the very man who murdered them.

In such a case it required perhaps either Richard or the arch-fiend himself to tempt her successfully; but in a less critical moment, a far less subtle and audacious seducer would have sufficed. Cressida is another modification of vanity, weakness, and falsehood, drawn in stronger colors. The world contains many Lady Annes and Cressidas, polished and refined externally, whom chance and vanity keep right, whom chance and vanity lead wrong, just as it may happen. When we read in history of the enormities of certain women, perfect scarecrows and ogresses, we can safely, like the Pharisee in Scripture, hug ourselves in our secure virtue, and thank G.o.d that we are not as others are--but the wicked women in Shakspeare are portrayed with such perfect consistency and truth, that they leave us no such resource--they frighten us into reflection--they make us believe and tremble. On the other hand, his amiable women are touched with such exquisite simplicity--they have so little external pretensions--and are so unlike the usual heroines of tragedy and romance, that they delight us more "than all the nonsense of the beau-ideal!" We are flattered by the perception of our own nature in the midst of so many charms and virtues: not only are they what we could wish to be, or ought to be, but what we persuade ourselves we might be, or would be, under a different and a happier state of things, and, perhaps, some time or other _may_ be. They are not stuck up, like the cardinal virtues, all in a row, for us to admire and wonder at--they are not mere poetical abstractions--nor (as they have been termed) mere abstractions of the affections,--

But common clay ta'en from the common earth.

Moulded by G.o.d, and tempered by the tears Of angels, to the perfect form of--_woman_.

MEDON.

Beautiful lines!--Where are they?

ALDA.

I quote from memory, and I am afraid inaccurately, from a poem of Alfred Tennyson's.

MEDON.

Well, between argument, and sentiment, and logic, and poetry, you are making out a very plausible case. I think with you that, in the instances you have mentioned, (as Lady Macbeth and Richard, Juliet, and Oth.e.l.lo, and others,) the want of comparative power is only an additional excellence; but to go to an opposite extreme of delineation, we must allow that there is not one of Shakspeare's women that, as a dramatic character, can be compared to Falstaff.

ALDA.

No; because any thing like Falstaff in the form of woman--any such compound of wit, sensuality, and selfishness, unchecked by the moral sentiments and the affections, and touched with the same vigorous painting, would be a gross and monstrous caricature. If it could exist in nature, we might find it in Shakspeare; but a moment's reflection shows us that it would be essentially an impossible combination of faculties in a female.

MEDON.

It strikes me, however, that his humorous women are feebly drawn, in comparison with some of the female wits of other writers.

ALDA.

Because his women of wit and humor are not introduced for the sole purpose of saying brilliant things, and displaying the wit of the author; they are, as I will show you, real, natural women, in whom _wit_ is only a particular and occasional modification of intellect. They are all, in the first place, affectionate, thinking beings, and moral agents; and _then_ witty, as if by accident, or as the d.u.c.h.esse de Chaulnes said of herself, "par la grace de Dieu." As to humor, it is carried as far as possible in Mrs. Quickly; in the termagant Catherine; in Maria, in "Twelfth Night;" in Juliet's nurse; in Mrs. Ford and Mrs.

Page. What can exceed in humorous navete, Mrs. Quickly's upbraiding Falstaff, and her concluding appeal--"Didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty s.h.i.+llings?" Is it not exquisite--irresistible? Mrs.

Ford and Mrs. Page are both "merry wives," but how perfectly discriminated! Mrs. Ford has the most good nature--Mrs. Page is the cleverer of the two, and has more sharpness in her tongue, more mischief in her mirth. In all these instances I allow that the humor is more or less vulgar; but a humorous woman, whether in high or low life has always a tinge of vulgarity.

MEDON.

I should like to see that word _vulgar_ properly defined, and its meaning limited--at present it is the most arbitrary word in the language.

ALDA.

Yes, like the word romantic, it is a convenient "exploding word," and in its general application signifies nothing more than "see how much finer I am than other people!"[1] but in literature and character I shall adhere to the definition of Madame de Stael, who uses the word _vulgar_ as the reverse of _poetical_. Vulgarity (as I wish to apply the word) is the _negative_ in all things. In literature, it is the total absence of elevation and depth in the ideas, and of elegance and delicacy in the expression of them. In character, it is the absence of truth, sensibility, and reflection. The vulgar in manner, is the result of vulgarity of character; it is grossness, hardness, or affectation.--If you would see how Shakspeare has discriminated, not only different degrees, but different kinds of plebeian vulgarity in women, you have only to compare the nurse in Romeo and Juliet with Mrs. Quickly. On the whole, if there are people who, taking the strong and essential distinction of s.e.x into consideration, still maintain that Shakspeare's female characters are not, in truth, in variety, in power, equal to his men, I think I shall prove the contrary.

MEDON.

I observe that you have divided your ill.u.s.trations into cla.s.ses; but shades of character so melt into each other, and the various faculties and powers are so blended and balanced, that all cla.s.sification must be arbitrary. I am at a loss to conceive where you have drawn the line; here, at the head of your first chapter, I find "Characters of Intellect"--do you call Portia intellectual, and Hermione and Constance not so?

ALDA.

I know that Schlegel has said that it is impossible to arrange Shakspeare's characters in cla.s.ses: yet some cla.s.sification was necessary for my purpose. I have therefore divided them into characters in which intellect and wit predominate; characters in which fancy and pa.s.sion predominate; and characters in which the moral sentiments and affections predominate. The historical characters I have considered apart, as requiring a different mode of ill.u.s.tration. Portia I regard as a perfect model of an intellectual woman, in whom wit is tempered by sensibility, and fancy regulated by strong reflection. It is objected to her, to Beatrice, and others of Shakspeare's women, that the display of intellect is tinged with a coa.r.s.eness of manner belonging to the age in which he wrote. To remark that the conversation and letters of high-bred and virtuous women of that time were more bold and frank in expression than any part of the dialogue appropriated to Beatrice and Rosalind, may excuse it to our judgment, but does not reconcile it to our taste. Much has been said, and more might be said on this subject--but I would rather not discuss it. It is a mere difference of manner which is to be regretted, but has nothing to do with the essence of the character.

MEDON.

I think you have done well in avoiding the topic altogether; but between ourselves, do you really think that the refinement of manner, the censorious, hypocritical, verbal scrupulosity, which is carried so far in this "picked age" of ours, is a true sign of superior refinement of taste, and purity of morals? Is it not rather a whiting of the sepulchre? I will not even allude to individual instances whom we both know, but does it not remind you, on the whole, of the tone of French manners previous to the revolution--that "decence," which Horace Walpole so admired,[2] veiling the moral degradation, the inconceivable profligacy of the higher cla.s.ses?--Stay--I have not yet done--not to you, but _for_ you, I will add thus much;--our modern idea of delicacy apparently attaches more importance to words than to things--to manners than to morals. You will hear people inveigh against the improprieties of Shakspeare, with Don Juan, or one of those infernal French novels--I beg your pardon--lying on their toilet table. Lady Florence is shocked at the sallies of Beatrice, and Beatrice would certainly stand aghast to see Lady Florence dressed for Almack's; so you see that in both cases the fas.h.i.+on makes the indecorum. Let her ladys.h.i.+p new model her gowns!

ALDA.

Well, well, leave Lady Florence--I would rather hear you defend Shakspeare.

MEDON.

I think it is Coleridge who so finely observes that Shakspeare ever kept the high road of human life, whereon all travel, that he did not pick out by-paths of feeling and sentiment; in him we have no moral highwaymen, and sentimental thieves and rat-catchers, and interesting villains, and amiable, elegant adulteresses--_a-la-mode Germanorum_--no delicate entanglements of situation, in which the grossest images are presented to the mind disguised under the superficial attraction of style and sentiment. He flattered no bad pa.s.sion, disguised no vice in the garb of virtue, trifled with with no just and generous principle. He can make us laugh at folly, and shudder at crime, yet still preserve our love for our fellow-beings, and our reverence for ourselves. He has a lofty and a fearless trust in his own powers, and in the beauty and excellence of virtue; and with his eye fixed on the lode-star of truth, steers us triumphantly among shoals and quicksands, where with any other pilot we had been wrecked:--for instance, who but himself would have dared to bring into close contact two such characters as Iago and Desdemona? Had the colors in which he has arrayed Desdemona been one atom less transparently bright and pure, the charm had been lost; she could not have borne the approximation: some shadow from the overpowering blackness of _his_ character must have pa.s.sed over the sun-bright purity of _hers_. For observe that Iago's disbelief in the virtue of Desdemona is not pretended, it is real. It arises from his total want of faith in all virtue; he is no more capable of conceiving goodness than she is capable of conceiving evil. To the brutish coa.r.s.eness and fiendish malignity of this man, her gentleness appears only a contemptible weakness; her purity of affection, which saw "Oth.e.l.lo's visage in his mind," only a perversion of taste; her bashful modesty, only a cloak for evil propensities; so he represents them with all the force of language and self-conviction, and we are obliged to listen to him. He rips her to pieces before us--he would have bedeviled an angel! yet such is the unrivalled, though pa.s.sive delicacy of the delineation, that it can stand it unhurt, untouched! It is wonderful!--yet natural as it is wonderful! After all, there are people in the world, whose opinions and feelings are tainted by an habitual acquaintance with the evil side of society, though in action and intention they remain right; and who, without the real depravity of heart and malignity of intention of Iago, judge as he does of the character and productions of others.

ALDA.

Heaven bless me from such critics! yet if genius, youth, and innocence could not escape unslurred, can I hope to do so? I pity from my soul the persons you allude to--for to such minds there can exist few uncontaminated sources of pleasure either in nature or in art.

MEDON.

Ay--"the perfumes of Paradise were poison to the Dives, and made them melancholy."[3] You pity them, and they will sneer at you. But what have we here?--"Characters of Imagination--Juliet--Viola;" are these romantic young ladies the pillars which are to sustain your moral edifice? Are they to serve as examples or as warnings for the youth of this enlightened age?

ALDA.

As warnings, of course--what else?

MEDON.

Against the dangers of romance?--but where are they? "Vraiment," as B.

Constant says, "je ne vois pas qu'en fait d'enthousiasme, le feu soit a la maison." Where are they--these disciples of poetry and romance, these victims of disinterested devotion and believing truth, these unblown roses--all conscience and tenderness--whom it is so necessary to guard against too much confidence in others, and too little in themselves--where are they?

ALDA.

Wandering in the Elysian fields, I presume, with the romantic young gentlemen who are too generous, too zealous in defence of innocence, too enthusiastic in their admiration of virtue, too violent in their hatred of vice, too sincere in friends.h.i.+p, too faithful in love, too active and disinterested in the cause of truth--

MEDON.

Very fair! But seriously, do you think it necessary to guard young people, in this selfish and calculating age, against an excess of sentiment and imagination? Do you allow no distinction between the romance of exaggerated sentiment, and the romance of elevated thought?

Do _you_ bring cold water to quench the smouldering ashes of enthusiasm?

Methinks it is rather superfluous; and that another doctrine is needed to withstand the heartless system of expediency which is the favorite philosophy of the day. The warning you speak of may be gently hinted to the few who are in danger of being misled by an excess of the generous impulses of fancy and feeling; but need hardly, I think, be proclaimed by sound of trumpet amid the mocks of the world. No, no; there are young women in these days, but there is no such thing as youth--the bloom of existence is sacrificed to a fas.h.i.+onable education, and where we should find the rose-buds of the spring, we see only the fullblown, flaunting, precocious roses of the hot-bed.

ALDA.

Blame then that _forcing_ system of education, the most pernicious, the most mistaken, the most far-reaching in its miserable and mischievous effects, that ever prevailed in this world. The custom which shut up women in convents till they were married, and then launched them innocent and ignorant on society, was bad enough; but not worse than a system of education which inundates us with hard, clever, sophisticated girls, trained by knowing mothers, and all-accomplished governesses, with whom vanity and expediency take place of conscience and affection--(in other words, of romance)--"frutto senile in sul giovenil fiore;" with feelings and pa.s.sions suppressed or contracted, not governed by higher faculties and purer principles; with whom opinion--the same false honor which sends men out to fight duels--stands instead of the strength and the light of virtue within their own souls.

Hence the strange anomalies of artificial society--girls of sixteen who are models of manner miracles of prudence, marvels of learning, who sneer at sentiment, and laugh at the Juliets and the Imogens; and matrons of forty, who, when the pa.s.sions should be tame and wait upon the judgment, amaze the world and put us to confusion with their doings.

MEDON.