have not now to contest their opinion?we are only pointing out how it is
unconsciously encouraged by many women who have volunteered themselves
as representatives of the feminine intellect. We do not believe that a man was
ever strengthened in such an opinion by associating with a woman of true
culture, whose mind had absorbed her knowledge instead of being absorbed
by it. A really cultured woman, like a really cultured man, is all the simpler
and the less obtrusive for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her
opinions in something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal
from which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men
and things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right
estimate of herself. She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero6 on slight
provocation; not because she thinks that a sacrifice must be made to the prej
udices of men, but because that mode of exhibiting her memory and Latinity
does not present itself to her as edifying or graceful. She does not write books
to confound philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that
delight them. In conversation she is the least formidable of women, because
she understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you can't under
stand her. She does not give you information, which is the raw material of
culture,?she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest essence. A more numerous class of silly novels than the oracular, (which are generally
inspired by some form of High Church, or transcendental Christianity,) is
what we may call the white neck-cloth species, which represent the tone of
thought and feeling in the Evangelical party. This species is a kind of genteel
tract on a large scale, intended as a sort of medicinal sweetmeat for Low
Church young ladies; an Evangelical substitute for the fashionable novel, as
5. Inflated diction. It is assumed a Yorkshireman of a Londoner. cannot discern the difference between his north-6. Roman statesman and orator (106?43 B.C.E.), ern dialect and the putatively more refined speech and a staple of Latin instruction for centuries.
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SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS / 134 7
the May Meetings7 are a substitute for the Opera. Even Quaker children, one
would think, can hardly have been denied the indulgence of a doll; but it must
be a doll dressed in a drab gown and a coal-scuttle bonnet?not a worldly doll,
in gauze and spangles. And there are no young ladies, we imagine,?unless
they belong to the Church of the United Brethren, in which people are married
without any love-making8?who can dispense with love stories. Thus, for
Evangelical young ladies there are Evangelical love stories, in which the vicis
situdes of the tender passion are sanctified by saving views of Regeneration
and the Atonement. These novels differ from the oracular ones, as a Low
Churchwoman often differs from a High Churchwoman: they are a little less
supercilious, and a great deal more ignorant, a little less correct in their syntax, and a great deal more vulgar.9 The Orlando1 of Evangelical literature is the young curate, looked at from
the point of view of the middle class, where cambric bands are understood to
have as thrilling an effect on the hearts of young ladies as epaulettes2 have in
the classes above and below it. In the ordinary type of these novels, the hero
is almost sure to be a young curate, frowned upon, perhaps, by worldly mam
mas, but carrying captive the hearts of their daughters, who can 'never forget
that sermon;' tender glances are seized from the pulpit stairs instead of the
opera-box; tete-a-tetes are seasoned with quotations from Scripture, instead of
quotations from the poets; and questions as to the state of the heroine's affec
tions are mingled with anxieties as to the state of her soul. The young curate
