University of Virginia Library

II

Going a step farther, the most casual investigator becomes acquainted with Mrs. Wharton's propriety, tact, nicety of craftsmanship, and that special possession which in creative art is of the first importance,—human personality. Those people who advocate the suppression of all traces of the creator in his creations are too ascetic, too marmoreal, too super-or infra-human. Our generation, not yet wholly purged of the lingering effects left by the old Romantic individualism, cannot but feel that the more fiction is interpenetrated by the author's personality the more interesting it is.

This assumption involves as a corollary the immense importance of gender; and gender is indeed a matter of fundamental interest in literature, as in life. We are born on one side or the other of the great chasm; and in whichever camp we are, on the approach of anything that awakens our real interest, we challenge at once, "Fine or Superfine?" A man's world is not a woman's world. He and she are differently endowed; they perceive differently,—that is, all except the bald, unannotated reports of the senses,—group their impressions differently, deduce differently. Traits which preserve

neutrality and straddle the chasm, serving both sides alike, are limited to the performance of the mechanical parts of fiction, and subject to rules and regulations. Where they end, begins the employment of those faculties that make individuality; and here the first rough and ready test as to whether the work has the flavor of personality is the determination of sex. Readers, male readers at least, are sometimes so blinded by prejudice, by an indefensible habit of identifying art with the male sex, that when a woman writes a novel such as Jane Eyre or Adam Bede, there is a general masculine readiness to be surprised, and a general masculine agreement that the talents and capacities which created the novel are of a peculiarly masculine order. In Mrs. Wharton's case men are debarred from any such self-complacent theory, for her talents and capacities are not only intrinsically feminine, but also, despite her cleverness, which, generally speaking, is a neutral trait, they are superficially feminine.

This fundamental fact of Mrs. Wharton's femininity is conspicuous in many ways. There was, for instance, in her early stories, a certain feminine dependence, as a girl on skates for the first time might lay the tip of her finger on a supporting arm. She showed a wish to learn, a ready docility, and the attractive simplicity of credulity, toward her first teacher, such as women, with their innate appreciation of authority, possess in a much greater degree than men. This hesitating dependence, as she took her first comparatively timid steps, following as closely as she could the sway and oscillations to which her teacher subjected his equilibrium, served her purpose. She learned her lesson, skated with ever greater ease, and, though still maintaining the rules she had learned, gradually got her own balance, and, after hard work and frequent practice, skated off, head erect, scarf, ribbons, and vesture floating free, with the speed and security of a racer. Her movements are always feminine movements, her ease, her poise, always feminine.

There is also in the stories what one might call a certain feminine capriciousness or arbitrariness, even beyond the ordinary autocracy of the story-teller, a method of deciding upon instinct rather than upon reflection. Take the union of episodes. Mrs. Wharton sees her story in episodes, or rather she sees episodes and puts them together. Sometimes they have no natural congruity, or are even rebelliously opposed to union. A man would acknowledge their independence, and leave them apart; but Mrs. Wharton, insisting on her autocratic prerogatives, forcibly unites them. In The Sanctuary, for example, she conceived the idea of repeating weakness of character and similarity of temptation in two generations; so she contrived two episodes, which, however, had no natural bond of union. She then put double duty on the heroine, and made her fulfill the function of joining the two episodes by the ingenious method of marrying her to the hero of the first in order to make her the mother of the hero of the second.

Her choice of plot, even, is distinctly feminine. Take The Touchstone for instance:given the situation, a man would have shifted the centre of gravity, and have rearranged all the effects. Her emphasis, her sense of interest, of importance, differ from a man's. Her feminine tact—that quality of unexpected control among forces so slight or so stubborn that no man can see how a woman gets her leverage; that power of steering when his rudder would be trailing in the air or stuck in the mud—is conspicuous in dialogue, in adjustment of relations, in the whole frame and finish of the story.

These characteristics are minor matters, but they point unhesitatingly to the conclusion that Mrs. Wharton is not only mentally feminine, with all the value of personality and humanity, but so much so as to belong plainly enough to the species,—the notable and justly celebrated

species,—the American woman. This interesting type has been studied with the ardor due to the rapid modification by which it has diverged from its European progenitors. Its salient traits are well known, and perhaps no one has portrayed them more effectively than Mr. John Sargent. In his portraits we see a network of nerves drawn too taut for the somewhat inadequate equipment of flesh and blood: an attention given to the business of receiving and acting upon sensations so disproportionate that there is no proper leisure for the sensations themselves; a superior, indeed, a snubbing attitude of the nervous system toward the rest of the body. In Sargent's women there is no wholesome tendency to loafing, no ease of manner, no sense of physical bien-etre: rather they stand, or sit—in the latter case on the edge of their chairs—like discoboli, waiting for a signal to whirl and hurl anything—anywhere—direction being unimportant, the sibylline contortion everything. This fundamental nervous restlessness shows itself in all Mrs. Wharton's stories, in her rapidity of thought, of phrase, of dialogue, in her intensity, her eagerness, her rush of thought. This American dash, this cascade-like brilliancy of motion, make, no doubt, for most readers the interest of the stories. But many of us, idle and inefficient, weakly wish for repose, a little pause, a trifling indulgence. With many story-tellers the reader gets aboard an accommodation train, and during the jogging, the stopping and starting, the pleasant Trollopy leisure, he looks out of the window, reflects on what has gone before, and speculates on what is to come. None of these weaknesses are permitted to Mrs. Wharton's readers,—I speak of the stories,—we are booked express, the present is all-exacting, and the pace is American.

This nervous eagerness and intensity find their fullest and freest expression in the epigrams, metaphors, similes, and aphorisms which crack fast and furious about our ears. No sooner do we hear an epigrammatic phrase, catch a loose end of its applicability, and grasp at apprehension, than crack! crack! go another and another. There is something almost vindictive in this hailstorm. "His egoism was not of a kind to mirror its complacency in the adventure." "There was something fatuous in an attitude of sentimental apology toward a memory already classic." "He had no fancy for leaving havoc in his wake, and would have preferred to sow a quick growth of oblivion in the spaces wasted by his inconsidered inroads;" and so forth. Such quotations—one can pluck them from every page—are clearly the literary gesticulations of an American woman.