Caroline Helstone reflects bitterly on the helplessness of her position:[1]
"I observe that to such grievances as society cannot readily
cure, it usually forbids utterance, on pain of its scorn: this
scorn being only a sort of tinselled cloak to its deformed weakness.
People hate to be reminded of ills they are unwilling or
unable to remedy: such reminder, in forcing on them a sense
of their own incapacity, or a more painful sense of an obligation
to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their ease and shakes
their self-complacency. Old maids, like the homeless and unemployed
poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in
the world: the demand disturbs the happy and rich: it disturbs
parents."
She envies Solomon's model woman, who had to arise
early to go about her own business; and Violet Effingham
exclaims,—[2]
"'I wish I could be something, if it were only a stick in waiting,
or a door-keeper. It is so good to be something!'
"'A man should try to be something,' said Phineas.
"'And a woman must be content to be nothing,—unless Mr. Mill can pull us through!'"
By the late seventies, Mr. Mill, with reinforcements,
had done something toward pulling us through; so that
Meredith was able to satirize masculine desire to stave off
the threatened feminism, and failure to appreciate the
value of equality in comradeship.
In his ideal for his first betrothed, Constantia Durham, Sir Willoughby is as much Man as Egoist:[3]
- ↑ Shirley, II, 71. Trollope speaks through Laura Kennedy and Madame Max Goesler, in Phineas Finn, the former of whom longs vainly to go out and milk the cows, while the latter complains of having only vicarious interests.
- ↑ Phineas Finn, III, 103. After finally accepting Lord Chiltern, she almost gives him up because she cannot stand his idleness.
- ↑ The Egoist, 21.
