R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

62 Walter de la Mareescaped from Aphra Behn's pocket, but was assiduouslywatered by Charlotte Bronte, was not already in vogue.The intention was different. Love, as Miss Storm Jamesonhas recently declared, is an emotion that concerns notonly the body, but the mind, spirit and imagination ofman or woman. This seems to have been the view sharedby most women novelists in the 'seventies, and it givestheir treatment of the theme, balance, proportion anddepth. Women of the world they may have been, andwomen (as Rhoda Broughton puts it) 'too thorough...not to enjoy household work', but in their explorationsof the House of Life they did not lavish an unconscionablyprotracted scrutiny on the drains. Some of themwere a little prudish; a few paddled in the shocking; butthat as yet was not a difficult feat. Nowadays novelistsbent on the same adventure and in search of low tidecannot but ' weep like anything to see Such quantities ofsand'. A day may come when the ultimate shore willloom into view and the artist be left to work in peace.As for the 'free' woman in another sense, she wasrather frowned upon than otherwise. 'I thought', saysSebastian, one of the two heroes of Probation,' I thought that if Miss Mere weather disapproves so strongly ofmen in general, it would annoy her to be mistaken for one of thatodious and inferior sex; and, moreover, would only be a sign ofhow very different she must be from most women.''She is very superior to most women' [replies Helena, her devotee].'If that is what you mean, I concede the point willingly.''Well, if such a superior woman is often mistaken for a man, isnot that a piece of negative evidence of the inferiority of womenin general?' Sebastian asked politely.Then, as now, I suppose, the majority of assiduousnovel-readers were women. None the less, note neitherexclamatory nor interrogatory bedecked my library copyof Probation at this remark, and annotators appear tohave been grossly free with the pencil in those days.