The collapse of the pedestal: From the supersensual ideal to the complex, sensual heroine in literature

“ If, from the loftiest epic to the tritest novel, a heroine is often little more than a name to which we are called upon to bow, as to a symbol representing beauty, and if we ourselves (be we ever so indifferent in our common life to fair faces) feel that, in art at least, imagination needs an image of the Beautiful— if, in a word, both poet and reader here would not be left excuseless, it is because in our inmost hearts there is a sentiment which links the ideal of beauty with the Supersensual. ”

“ Not very many years ago a contributor to the "Westminster Review" asserted seriously that "the greater affectionateness" of women enabled them to write stories, and that "the domestic experiences, which form the bulk of their knowledge, find an appropriate place in novels. The very nature of fiction calls for that predominance of sentiment which befits the feminine mind." ”

“ This, we think, should be according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon every innocent heart. The precepts of prudery are often steeped in the guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of better moments. Truth, and beautiful dreams--loveliness, and delicacy of character, with cherished affections of the ideal woman --gentle hopes and aspirations, are enough to uphold her in the storms of darkness, without the transferred colorings of a stained sufferer. How often have we seen it in our public prints, that woman occupies a false station in the world! ”

“ But I wish that some learned pundit would give us a good definition of romance, would describe in words that feeling with which our hearts are so pestered when we are young, which makes us sigh for we know not what, and forbids us to be contented with what God sends us. We invest female beauty with impossible attributes, and are angry because our women have not the spiritualised souls of angels, anxious as we are that they should also be human in the flesh. A man looks at her he would love as at a distant landscape in a mountainous land. ”

“ Without taking them too seriously, it still must be owned that the “gaudy hero and heroine” are to blame for a great deal of harm in the world. That heroine long taught by example, if not precept, that Love, or the passion or fancy she mistook for it, was the chief interest of a life, which is really concerned with a great many other things ”

“ Hence our reaction to those ancient types of romances where the heroes are always strong, pursuing false ideals, obeying silly codes of honour, and are always triumphant; we weary still more of the heroines who are always without individuality. ”

“ Women have many faults, but, thank God, they have one redeeming virtue—they are none of them faultless.
But the heroine of fiction! oh, a terrible dragon of virtue is she. May heaven preserve us poor men, undeserving though we be, from a life with the heroine of fiction. She is all soul, and heart, and intellect, with never a bit of human nature to catch hold of her by. Her beauty, it appals one, it is so painfully indescribable. Whence comes she, whither goes she, why do we never meet her like? Of women I know a goodish few, and I look among them for her prototype ”

“ The history of our heroine is a striking exemplification of the truth of this remark: when all was darkness without, she had been looked upon by the compassionate as an object of pity, for they could not see the sunshine of the breast; and now that she was considered as the chief favourite of the fickle goddess, there was not one that would have envied her, if the internal conflict she suffered—if that most unpleasant of all feelings, disagreement with herself, had been as visible, as her external fortunes were. ”

“ We know them by nothing but their convulsions and spasms, and we feel once again that it is not the passion of hero and heroine that gives, that can ever give, the heroine and the hero interest, but that it is they themselves, with the ground they stand on and the objects enclosing them, who give interest to their passion. ”

“ When it comes to character it is different; and even though the spectacle of a woman with fewer attractions than I have named, and a disposition that left something to be desired, enslaving men of renown, is [163] not unknown to history, it seems a little unusual to design a heroine as the very embodiment of selfishness, and then exhibit her as the perfect woman. The life that is shown to us is chiefly that of a girl,—old enough, and independent and intelligent enough, to know perfectly what she was doing,—constantly allowing, or alluring, men to make love to her ”

“ But it seems unlikely, to say the least, that the heroine, after being deserted by the man she really loves, should, considering her very erotic and unprincipled temperament, find complete happiness in the publication of a successful novel and in devotion to her child. ”

“ While in the literature of half a century ago the heroine represented the fundamental type of woman, who is a mother of men, calling out men’s sacrifice and sacrificing herself for them, without calculation or barter, the heroine of the contemporary novel gives herself up to voluptuous excesses. The absence of chastity is considered a sign of the warmth of her feeling, moral decrepitude is called by the doubtful name “self-assertion,” and the exaggerated taste for self-indulgence is termed “self-expression.” Feminine selfishness is represented as an enviable instead of a base quality. ”

“ Or it may be that the heroine is not an heiress—that rank and wealth are the only things in which she is deficient; but she infallibly gets into high society, she has the triumph of refusing many matches and securing the best, and she wears some family jewels or other as a sort of crown of righteousness at the end. Rakish men either bite their lips in impotent confusion at her repartees, or are touched to penitence by her reproofs, which, on appropriate occasions, rise to a lofty strain of rhetoric ”

“ The great fault, in my opinion, both of the writer and of the poet, is to idealize woman too much, and especially the young girl.
On the stage just as in the novel, the heroines are placed on a sort of pedestal where they receive haughtily the incense and homage of poor mankind.
They are perfect beings, of superior essence, gifted with all the beauties and all the virtues, whose white robes of innocence never receive, amidst all the impurities, of our social state, the slightest splash. ”

“ Now my ambition is to be a Heroine, and how can I hope to succeed in my vocation, unless I, too, suffer privations and inconveniences? Besides, have I not far greater merit in getting a husband by sentiment, adventure, and melancholy, than by dressing, gadding, dancing, and singing? For heroines are just as much on the alert to get husbands, as other young ladies; and to say the truth, I would never voluntarily subject myself to misfortunes, were I not certain that matrimony would be the last of them. But even misery itself has its consolations and advantages. ”

“ Readers cannot fail to have remarked that what an author tells us of the beauty or the charm of his creatures goes for nought; that we know instantly better; that the heroine cannot open her mouth but what, all in a moment, the fine phrases of preparation fall from round her like the robes from Cinderella, and she stands before us, self-betrayed, as a poor, ugly, sickly wench, or perhaps a strapping market-woman. Authors, at least, know it well; a heroine will too often start the trick of “getting ugly;” and no disease is more difficult to cure. ”

“ Any man or woman who attempts, from a diseased craving after novelty, to cheat me out of one of her moonlight walks, one of her floods of tears, one of her kneeling entreaties to obdurate relatives, one of her rapturous sinkings on her lover's bosom, is a novelist whom I distrust and dislike. He, or she, may be a very remarkable writer; but their books will not do for my family and myself. The Heroine, the whole Heroine, and nothing but the Heroine—that is our cry, if you drive us into a corner and insist on our stating precisely what we want, in the plainest terms possible. ”

“ The new-fashioned heroine is a libel on her sex. As a husband and a father, I solemnly deny that she is in any single respect a natural woman. Am I no judge? I have a wife, and I made her an offer. Did she receive it as the Man-Haters receive offers? Can I ever forget the mixture of modest confusion and perfect politeness with which that admirable woman heard me utter the most absolute nonsense that ever issued from my lips? Perhaps she is not fit for a heroine. ”

“ I have been annoyed beyond measure at the habit our writers of fiction have fallen into, of throwing their heroes perpetually into a sort of swoon or delirium, or state of half consciousness. That a heroine should occasionally faint, and so permit the author to carry her quietly off the stage—this is an old expedient, natural and allowable. What I complain of is, that whenever the passions of the hero himself rise to a certain pitch ”

“ Now, it is precisely in these effects that the chief excellence of romance resides; it was the discovery of a world of these effects, insusceptible of treatment by the drama, neglected entirely by the character-novel, which constituted the Romantic revival of the end of last century. ‘The artistic result of a romance,’ says Stevenson, ‘what is left upon the memory by any powerful and artistic novel, is something so complicated and refined that it is difficult to put a name upon it, and yet something as simple as nature. ”

“ What are the indescribable effects that romance, casting far beyond problems of character and conduct, seeks to realise? What is the nature of the great informing, underlying idea that animates a truly great romance—The Bride of Lammermoor, Monte Cristo, Les Misérables, The Scarlet Letter, The Master of Ballantrae? ”

“ It is the lady-like age: and so it is the age of ladies' novels. Women have it all their own way now in romance. They carry off all the prizes, just as girl students do in the studios of Paris. Up to a certain point, within their own limits, they are supreme. Half the modern romance, and many people think the better half, is written by women. That is perfectly natural, an obvious result of modern society. The romance to which our age best lends itself is the romance of ordinary society, with delicate shades of character and feeling in place of furious passion or picturesque incident. ”

“ It is the novel in which the heroine looks finished that does not come to anything. I always feel a little grieved and frustrated—as if human nature had been blasphemed a little in my presence—if a novel finishes its people or thinks it can. It is a small novel which finishes love—and lays it away; which makes me love say one brave woman or mother in a book, and close her away for ever. The greater novel makes me love one woman in a book in such a way that I go about through all the world seeking for her—knowing and loving a thousand women through her. ”

“ Nothing so much sharpens the edge of affliction as a consciousness of having brought it upon ourselves, to remember that all we could wish for, all that could make us truly happy, was once in our power to be possessed of; and wantonly shunning the good that Heaven and fortune offered, we headlong run into the ills we mourn, rendering them doubly grievous.
This being the case with our heroine, how ought all the fair and young to guard against a vanity so fatal to a lady, who, but for that one foible, had been the happiest, as she was in all other respects the most deserving, of her sex! ”

“ The weakness and irresolution of the heroine are made the pivot of each turning point in the plot. When she yields to her lover's entreaties to consummate a hasty marriage; when fear of her father's displeasure induces her to keep their union a secret; when her love of luxurious grandeur at court persuades her to contract a more exalted match; when her terror of Clermont forces her into a shameless expedient for the sake of mollifying his anger ”

“ For instance, her customary appreciation of a book or a work of art dealing with love, and nothing but love, is the outcome of something more than sentiment and overpowering consciousness of sex. To her a woman in love is not only a woman swayed by emotion, but a human being engaged in carving for herself a career or securing for herself a means of livelihood. Her interest in a love story is, therefore, much more complex than a man’s interest therein, and the appreciation which she brings to it is of a very different quality. ”

“ Is this a strong statement, a libel upon the female sex? But you read novel after novel in which the larger number of women—all, perhaps, except the heroine—are represented as artful, sly, deceitful, managing; and generally the main object of their artifice is to secure a husband for themselves or for their daughters: yet you do not at once cry out in indignant protest against such misrepresentation. On the contrary, you follow the plot with lively interest, think the author has a very clear insight into human nature, and especially excels in the delineation of female character! ”

“ We are forced to pardon and to love the heroine; she is beautiful, and miserable, and lofty-minded; and her crimes, however dark, have been expiated by long years of weeping and woe. Considering also that they were the fruit not of calculation, but of passion acting on a heart not dead, though blinded for a time, to their enormity, they seem less hateful than the cold premeditated villany of which she is the victim. ”

“ The heroine is admired, and her constancy and devotion believed to be virtues of the highest order, and worthy of imitation, when she is but too often the mere false creation of a corrupt mind, and has no counterpart in real life, because she cannot have. From this fault even our best novelists are not wholly free.
True love is not a wild, strong, fiery, impetuous passion. ”

“ When your heroine begins to grow old without arriving at anything or deciding anything for herself, and sees that she is forsaken by all, that she is uninteresting and superfluous, when she understands that the people around her were idle, useless, bad people (her father too) , and that she has let her life slip—is not that more dreadful than the Nihilists? ”

“ But this will not do: his heart proves made of impenetrable stuff, at length, the heroine, compelled by dire necessity, marries, contrary to her inclination, a man she dislikes exceedingly. But still she retains her first passion; and what is more, disregarding the obligations of duty imposed by her new character, she attends on his dying bed, the man for whom she first suffered love. The consequence is almost ludicrously disastrous:—the husband attaches himself to a female domestic, and to conclude and complete the catastrophe, he finally shoots himself through the head. ”

“ Here the real author ceased awhile. Three succeeding books were but fancies wrought out, grafts, happy thoughts, very possibly enforced work; but there were no more spontaneous affairs of her own individuality, until the one entitled "Almost a Heroine." In this work, which treated of the possible perfection of marriage, the whole womanly nature of the writer asserted itself by virtue of the mere fact of humanity. ”

“ Have many people stopped to realize, I wonder, how completely the psychological novel and the 'problem' play (in the old sense) have gone out of date? The psychology of hero and heroine, their emotional attitudes to each other, are largely worked out now in terms of their attitudes to impersonal questions, their religious or their sociological 'principles.' The individual personal reaction counts less and less. If they agree on the same panacea for the social evils, the author can usually patch up a passion sufficient for them to marry on. ”

“ One thing will be observed with regard to these following papers—though they are imbued with an intense interest in women, they are devoid of the spirit of Romance. I mean that attitude toward woman which accepts her sex as a miraculous justification for her existence, the belief that being a woman is a virtue in itself, apart from the possession of other qualities: in short, woman-worship. The reverence for woman as virgin, or wife, or mother, irrespective of her capacities as friend or leader or servant—that is Romance. ”

“ Sensuality.—Sensuality is not love, but an unbridled desire which kills the soul. Sensuality will drive away the roses in the cheeks of womanhood, undermine health and produce a brazen countenance that can be read by all men. The harlot may commit her sins in the dark, but her countenance reveals her character and her immorality is an open secret. ”

“ One must be sensual to be human?"
"Certainly, Madame. True pity, like tenderness, comes from the heart. He is not intelligent enough to doubt. He believes what he has read. And he has read that to establish universal happiness society must be destroyed. Thirst for martyrdom devours him. One morning, having kissed his mother, he goes out; he watches for the socialist deputy of his district, sees him, throws himself on him, and buries a poniard in his breast. Long live anarchy! He is arrested, measured, photographed, questioned, judged, condemned to death, and guillotined. That is my novel." ”

“ Then the energies of a great many men would be devoted to suppressing love and strangling it in themselves; then the intellectual and spiritual sanctions of love would be withdrawn, the beauty and charm and joy would go out of it, and it would become a starving beggar at the gates, or a thief skulking in the night-time, or an assassin with a dagger and club. In other words, sex would become all the horror that it is today, in the form of purchased vice, and more highly purchased marriage, and secret shame, and obscure innuendo. ”

“ He could go and do as he pleased; indulge in brutal excess, pander to every hideous passion of his heart, poison with his vile touch the beautiful creature whom he looked down upon as “only a woman”; but she, if she dared to overstep the line of propriety, and openly declare her love for another, she would be doomed to social ostracism, shunned and despised as a wanton, and out of the pale of decent society. ”

“ You want to clutch things and have them in your power. You want to have things in your power. And why? Because you haven't got any real body, any dark sensual body of life. You have no sensuality. You have only your will and your conceit of consciousness, and your lust for power, to KNOW.'
He looked at her in mingled hate and contempt, also in pain because she suffered, and in shame because he knew he tortured her. ”

“ But then, after a while, pop it all goes. The moment woman has got man's ideals and tricks drilled into her, the moment she is competent in the manly world—there's an end of it. She's had enough. She's had more than enough. She hates the thing she has embraced. She becomes absolutely perverse, and her one end is to prostitute herself and her ideals to sex. ”

“ And if another girl, who has passed her childhood in complete purity, now, with awakened senses and warm impetuous womanliness, gives herself to a man in love or even only in passion, they all stand up and scream that she is 'dishonored!' And, not least, the prostituted girl with the hymen. It is she indeed who screams loudest and throws the biggest stones. Yet the 'dishonored' woman, who is sound and wholesome, need not fear to tell what she has done to the man who desires her in marriage, speaking as one human being to another. ”

“ To say that no one but a woman would have dared to imagine such a heroine, much less to follow her, through every phase of increasing hatefulness, to her horrid conclusion is to state an obvious truism. ”

“ The married women whose lush fields invited pleasaunce, and whose unchastity was still more complex. For in them, the passional was entered and deformed by the possessive; a chaos of morals, poesy and economics weeded their warm beauty. I was attracted, when at all, to sensuous women. And sensuousness that is not sheer becomes a tepid water: weak idealizing, smug and slavish exaltation of the ego muddies it. ”

“ And then he imagines that in reality sex passion is a smashing force that knocks people into each other’s arms, tumbles their heavens, smears their lives. He imagines that men and women love without thought, mate with the irresponsibility of hyenas. And imagining all this Wedekind creates a sort of droll fiend to prove it. Behold her—a creature to confound saints and sinners, to tear the beauty out of men’s souls and dance with muddied feet upon the finery of life. He dangles her before our eyes, naked and glorious—the diseased siren of the ages. And he calls her Lulu, the earth spirit. ”

“ But whoever heard of women being ashamed of yielding to the power of love? Instead they gloried in the surrender [Pg 240] of themselves and counted themselves blessed when love ruled. It is this need of man to escape from the power of the sensual appeal that has made him scorn sex and look upon the great creative power of life as something shameful and inferior, and in modern days treat it as a joke or with the indifferent superficiality which betrays emasculation and inadequacy. ”