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

66 Walter de la Maresense of the women depicted in it. Silliness, gush, sentimentality;the minx, the cat, the scold, the harpy, thegosling; the complete Grundy family may add their tang,but it takes all kinds of femininity to make the worldas it is, and even a faintly realistic fiction.Yet, for the most part these novels seem soon to havefaded out of remembrance. In 1904 Mr W. L. Courtneypublished his Feminine Note in Fiction, a critical surveyof eight women novelists of his day, John Oliver Hobbes,Mrs Humphry Ward, Lucas Malet, Gertrude Atherton,Mrs Woods, Mrs Voynich, Miss Robins, and Miss MaryWilkins. The abhorred shears had been busy, and thewind had changed since 1879. Of the twenty-threewriters who wrote or were written about in WomenNovelists of Queen Victoria's Reign his index mentionsonly four.In his introduction he maintains that feminine fictionin general suffers from a passion for detail. It is 'closeanalytic, miniature work', usually limited to a narrowpersonal experience, with a tendency to the self-consciousand a limitation of ideals. ' Would it be wrong to say thata woman's heroine is always a glorified version of herself?' Her fiction is too strenuous, worn out with zeal,the labour of the half-educated. A woman is that kindof human being, he quotes, 'who thinks with her backboneand feels with her nose'. Her historical evolutionmay be summarised in a quintet of terms, three ofwhich are derogatory, ' slave, hausfrau, madonna, witch,rival'.This is a withering summary, though it is honey ofHymettus compared with the views of Mrs Oliphant onthe Brontes. Mr Courtney's tests of the fiction of the'nineties were severe; the great, and for the most part,the man-made novel was his standard. We may if weplease submit the fiction of the 'seventies to similar tests.