LITERATURE AND ART.
WOMEN WRITERS AND MRS. EDWARDS.
It is no longer possible to patronize women as writers without taking rank in the mental classification which comprises prigs, pedants, and pretenders. Women, as writers, have fairly won the respect and admiration of readers and critics in the Republic of Letters. We have no more the assumed right of granting them a favorable hearing: we are glad to be admitted to share their powers.
The average woman, as a writer—allowing for the difference of experience and practice—is on the same level as the average man, as a writer. Generally speaking, I should say, women, as writers, show more flexibility and propriety of style, and men, as writers, more force and terseness of style.
In reading some pages of George Sand's Histoire de ma Vie, as noble as anything, and by some thought the best pages, she has written, I remarked that, in interrupting the current of her own thought to display a piece of prose written by Eugene Delacroix, she unconsciously brought out the characteristic difference between the highest and most distinctive traits of a noble example of prose from the pen of a woman, and a noble example of prose from the pen of a man. It seemed to me that, while George Sand treated her subject with admirable art, with rare flexibility, and maintained a beautiful harmony and proportion in her style, revealed a maternal spirit, as though her mind brooded over the subject, and seemed to be instinct with a mild energy, living with a patient strength, cushioned (if I may so speak) so that you only come in contact with its surface softness; Delacroix broke forth abrupt, muscular, and wrote like a man determined to make his power felt, while he gave expression, with aggressiveness and vim, to the strong conviction which possessed his mind. I seemed to have before me two representative examples of feminine and masculine forms of expression. I seemed to touch, mentally, the characteristic traits of the man and of the woman as prose writers. I believe this characteristic difference must always remain in a normal and harmonious development of their power as writers and artists. The habitual method of woman must be persuasive, pointed, or full of raillery: the habitual method of man must be aggressive, direct, and imperious—in other words, manhood and womanhood always maintain the integrity of their nature, and do not admit of rivalry, but correspondence, and provoke a beautiful interplay, and delight with their variety.
Of recent examples of woman's capacity to fill a place in literature, is the story of "Archie Lovell," by Mrs. Edwards.[1] An earlier work by Mrs. Edwards, "The Ordeal for Wives," did not promise so much, did not even indicate the uncommon freshness and charm of the delightful story of "Archie Lovell." So far as exact, well-drawn, vivid delineation of character may entitle a writer to a permanent place in the literature of an age, Mrs. Edwards has done enough to take rank among the first names of fiction; for, among contemporary novelists, she is without her superior in making faithful studies of individual character. Archie Lovell is quite a new being for novel readers. She is evidently studied from "the life," as all new characters must be studied, if a writer would get the local color. All of Mrs. Edwards's dramatic
- ↑ "Archie Lovell." A Novel. By Mrs. Annie Edwards, author of "Steven Lawrence, Yeoman," "Ordeal for Wives," etc. New edition. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1868.
