Representative American Story Tellers: Ellen Glasgow. | ||
I. HER TECHNIQUE
In glancing back over the twelve or fifteen years during which Miss Glasgow has been practising her careful, deliberate, finely conceived art, and patiently working, not without an occasional blunder, toward her present mastery of technique, one feels that on the whole she has not yet had in full the generous, wide-spread and serious recognition to which she is entitled. Some of her volumes, to be sure, have enjoyed a wide circulation; and in many quarters she has had cordial critical appreciation. And yet, at best, it seems distinctly disproportioned to a talent which, in the opinion of the present writer, stands in the forefront of American women novelists, outranking on the one side Mrs. Atherton, as far as it outranks Mrs. Wharton on the other.
And, in the first place, in order to understand the sound critical grounds for assigning so high a place to the author of The Deliverance, it seems not merely worth while but even obligatory to ex-
To state the case more correctly, it is curious that the first woman among our modern writers to achieve this type of novel should have happened to be a Southern woman. Because, since Miss Glasgow happens by birth and education to have a knowledge of Virginian scenes and people beyond that of other parts of the world, she has simply been obeying the most elementary principle of good technique when she chooses for her setting the region that she knows best; while such a volume as The Wheel of Life, in which the scene is laid in New York, is to be classed, in spite of much that is good, among the number of the author's blunders. One feels in this New York story as though Miss Glasgow were slightly out of her element, as though she lacked sympathy even for the best of the characters in it, and frankly disapproved of the others. It is even more difficult for a woman than for a man to attain the attitude of strict impersonality which is demanded by the highest rules of modern construction—and herein, one feels, lies one of Miss Glasgow's failings. She could not, if she would, help showing us how her heart goes out to certain favourite characters, young and old, white and black alike—nor would we have it otherwise, because in her affection for these people, whom she understands so profoundly, lies the secret of the abiding charm which they in turn possess for us.
Human stories, strong, tender, high-minded, her volumes undeniably are. But what one remembers about them, even after the specific story has faded from the mind, is their atmosphere of old-fashioned Southern courtesy and hospitality, of gentle breeding and steadfast adherence to traditional standards of honour. She has dealt with special skill with the anomalous and transitory conditions of society that followed the close of the war—the breaking down of old barriers; the fruitless resistance of conservatism to the new tendencies of social equality; the frequent pathetic struggles to keep up a brave show in spite of broken fortunes; the proud dignity that accepts poverty and hardship and manual labour with unbroken spirit. Such books as The Battle-Ground, The Deliverance, The Voice of the People, are in the best sense of the term novels of manners, which will be read by later generations with a curious interest because they will preserve a record of social conditions that are changing and passing away, more slowly yet quite as relentlessly as the dissolving vapours of a summer sunset.
Representative American Story Tellers: Ellen Glasgow. | ||