R. Brimley Johnson

“ I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone. ”

“ The biggest adventure in life, the deepest and truest feelings do, actually, involve that emotional abandon, or complete self-forgetting, which modernists exalt. But the giving away of one's whole self, that is, expressing one's whole self in passionate service, is not achieved by sudden, untested intimacy. It can only come, or grow, for those who seek understanding of each other, suffer the first mystery— (stirring the wonder dreams of youth) —to unfold and reveal itself in steady, controlled devotion to the vision of romance. ”

“ Beware, my love, I conjure you, of that self-delusion which has been fatal to the peace of many persons—beware of priding yourself on the gracefulness of sensibility: if you yield to this vanity, your happiness is lost for ever. Always remember how much more valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of sensibility. Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy: apathy cannot know the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world. ”

“ The humdrum pictures of insincere marriage, with which fiction is crowded to-day, come from mistakes or spiritual failure to be one's best self, not from constancy and faith. The need to perpetually revive intense emotion with a new mistress can never be felt in a true marriage. It is inevitable for so-called "free" love, the bitterest slavery of man.
For wedded love—that is, the permanent union of body and soul—there is ever a new and wonderful adventure, the deepening mystery of the closer bond. ”

“ Catherine is Evelina in miniature; the real ingénue whose country breeding exposes her to the most diverting distresses in a Society amazingly mixed. Hovering between Thorpes and Tilneys, like Evelina between Mirvans and Branghtons, she enters each circle with the same innocence, enthusiasm, and naïveté. Miss Austen’s sly boast of originality in allowing her heroine to fall in love without stopping to ascertain “the gentleman’s feelings,” is but gentle raillery at a similar presumption in Miss Burney. ”

“ And we have not, even yet, gone far enough! since, it is said, "Conversation is over-sexed, the novel under-sexed, therefore untrue, therefore insincere." By this creed, there is only one real thing in life—physical passion.
I do not suggest that contemporary thought is all evil, unclean or false. Many of our writers are serious, pure-minded men and women, rightly indignant with old falsehoods, honestly seeking new light. Much of their work, too, reveals both sincerity and truth, a finer instinct for the ideal than the Victorians ever knew. Their courage is heroic, their frankness most wise. ”

“ If not, perhaps, more essentially feminine than Fanny Burney, she is more womanly. The charming girlishness of Evelina has here matured into a grown-up sisterly attitude towards humanity, which, without being either quite worldly or at all pedantic, is yet artistically composed. Whether consciously or not, she has spoken—within her chosen province—the last word for all women for all time. There is no comment on life, no picture of manners, no detail of characterisation—either humorous or sympathetic—which a man could have expressed in these precise words. ”

“ Glittering and hot in the first flush of adventure, we see youth's brave curiosity endlessly awake. Yet it was cold, hard, and "strange" at the core: always, everywhere, a "stranger" upon the earth. Sylvia "was always running away"—from men and from herself; so weary, so hurt, and so afraid. For there was none to share the burden and the joy, no footing for her; nothing to hold on to and steady life, no future to build: weary and restless and alone. She could never stay anywhere, with anyone; searching for ever, for she knows not what. ”

“ Watson’s theories on life and marriage are particularly characteristic:
“I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school. I have been at school, Emma, and know what a life they lead; you never have. I should not like marrying a disagreeable man any more than yourself; but I do not think there are many very disagreeable men; I think I could like any good-humoured man with a comfortable income. I suppose my aunt brought you up to be rather refined.”
Emma Watson, in fact, like all Jane Austen’s heroines, shines by comparison with the rest of her family. ”

“ They have played their part in his drama, and may shuffle off to the wings. They are human beings in real life. And for the truth about them, we could tell such a dreary, monotonous, bitter and tragic sheaf of "Lonely Lives." We should show them to you, wandering round and round, in and out, under bright lights or behind dark corners; every year more weak and frightened, till strength fails them even for movement without hope, and they slip away into some silent pond.
And finally, from the first, if all love means constant change to revive passion, a life of continual experiment in emotion ”

“ Northanger Abbey has very much the appearance of juvenile effort, possibly recast in maturity. If not actually written in girlhood, it must be regarded as the flower of a true holiday spirit, blossoming in sheer fun. Fresh from the excited perusal of some novel by the terrifying Anne Radcliffe, whom I believe Miss Austen enjoyed as keenly as her own Catherine, she must have thrown herself into the composition of this delightful parody, just to renew its thrills, to linger over its absurdities. It is all pure farce, exaggeration cheerfully unrestrained. ”

“ Nobility shone out among us in those days, miracles beyond belief of what woman can do and suffer for big, or small, men: a new vision of the mothering of humanity that brought God to our side. Also, alas, terrible shattering of English girlhood, ugly staining of the pure in heart, feverish unrest, a fury of overdoing, a hard glitter of cold joy. Always haste, never growth. Wherefore to-day our morality is an ash-heap, which some weep over, others kick up.
Dare we refuse to face the black awakening to disillusion? ”

“ Either Jane Austen was lacking in the more robust humour of Thackeray and his predecessors, who seem to revel in the gaiety of the heartless; or she recognised the limitations of country life, where the artificial can never prosper for long; or she had, in her own quiet way, too much principle to countenance, even in fiction, any permanent happiness for the wicked.
However it be, the result is unique. Lady Susan stands alone as a heroine. As we have seen, the full depths of her criminality lurk beneath the surface: her power is rather hinted at than described. ”

“ In reality we are chiefly interested in the possible effects of the girl’s folly upon her elder sisters—will it, or will it not, separate them for ever from the men they love? It is only a few quiet words of unselfish sympathy from Jane, easily forgotten by most of us, that reveal the sentiments of the authoress on such questions—with which, apparently, she holds that fiction has little concern.
Primarily, however, we are attracted by Pride and Prejudice as a work of art. The unfailing humour and pointed wit, the marvellous aptness of every polished phrase, hold us spellbound. ”

“ But, if we laid too great stress on restraint, control, sacrifice, and mere orderliness; the new thinkers have, here again, missed the truth by their fiery haste. As the clear-sighted heroine of a recent novel has remarked, "It was a great and fine act to let yourself go—only no one said precisely where you went to."
Their Self is not a complete purposeful human being, of strong character and sustained courage, clear faith, and reasonable hope: certainly not of any charity whatsoever. The ego they would exalt is a mere riot of moods. ”

“ He is singularly pure-minded, preposterously domestic, and very confident about the natural supremacy of man. It is the immense amount of tender detail, the infinite number of soft touches which convict the author of femininity. Her hero, however, is no knight of romance, no Bayard of the drawing-room, no love-lorn youth of dreams, no “fine gentleman,” the mate of a girl’s sensibility. He is not all soul and heart. ”

“ We saw children cramped and losing themselves in their fathers' fetters; we saw injustice, misery, and wasted lives; many a marriage that proved a prison or a doll's house. We learned honestly to face, almost for the first time, the terrible abuse of sex behind drawn blinds that, seeming an integral part of civilization, was eating away the very heart of humanity and condemning, with grim cynicism, the complacency of the old code. ”

“ It is a picture of an ideal, stammeringly defined by Edgar: “The utmost vivacity of sentiment, all the charm of soul, eternally beaming in the eyes, playing in every feature, glowing in the complexion, and brightening every smile.”
Obviously hero and heroine are born for each other. He admires her above all women, himself has every perfection. ”

“ There will, moreover, be a thousand times more occasion for incompatibility, the jar of nerves; where there is no steady, devoted endeavour towards mutual forbearance and understanding, no spur to forgive—in courageous hope. Life in hotels may, superficially, expose less friction; but it quickly destroys any reality in comradeship. Only daily service can build up Love.
The mistress, in fact, remains an enervating luxury, a habit of living beyond our emotional means, a sparkling drug.
We have not found the Ideal, because it does not exist. ”

“ None has dwelt more persistently on the trivial details of everyday life, the conquests of observation. Whether concerned, like Miss Burney, with the Comedy of Manners; or, like George Eliot, with the Analysis of Soul; they have one and all found their inspiration in human nature. And, in reality, this was the main progress achieved in fiction between Richardson and the nineteenth century—the growth on which the true modern novel was built up. ”

“ They snatch at a moment's joy, utter a moment's emotion, act on a moment's thought. There is no idea of "finding" oneself before expressing oneself. Every passing fancy, feverish excitement, sudden hate, is to be flung [41] out upon a bewildered world; above all to the confounding and wounding of steadier souls—the old, the middle-aged, or any that bear another's burden. ”

“ I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields—on the real breathing men and women who can be [Pg 205] chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice, who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice. ”

“ IT IS SEX-CONFLICT.
The most obvious, and the most sincere, form of self-expression rests on pure emotion—a natural and healthy impulse. The right thus to express oneself belongs, as we acknowledge to-day, to women no less than men.
But, largely misled by their over-insistence upon the physical in human nature, too many modern thinkers confuse fierce excitement with deep emotion. Also seeing, and wisely exalting, the glory of youth's dream, they sanction, and even advise, thoughtless haste and action on every impulse. ”

“ Guy’s faults, on the other hand, are all on the surface; but his exalted saintliness is even more superhuman than the other’s unerring morality. Both exemplify a feminine ideal; though Philip has only one worshipper, her faith is unfaltering. His, indeed, is the type that lives to hold forth, to inform, and to dogmatise. Woe to the woman who ventures to think for herself. The power or charm of Guy is unconscious. They love his passionate outbursts, his generous impetuosity, his childish remorse and “sensibility.” ”

“ All that is finest and noblest in human nature has been built upon a pure and constant loyalty; of which the eternal symbol (however smirched and stained by folly or sin) is marriage and the home. Character, which ultimately rules the world, grows straight amidst the influence of family life. The permanent ideal for man and woman; creating [82] new life, bearing and cherishing each new generation, is a complete union of the whole nature, spiritual and physical, whereof the spiritual bond must be supreme.
Self-control, restraint, and, if needs be, Sacrifice, are the highest expression of Self. ”

“ There is, indeed, a touch of melodrama in the sharp contrast exhibited between their proud prickliness towards mankind and their idolatry of The Man. Few women have written more bitterly of our idle vanity, our heartless neglect and supreme selfishness, our blind folly, and our indifference to moral standards. None has spoken with more biting emphasis of woman’s natural superiority, or of the grinding tyranny which, for so many generations, she is herein shown to have stupidly endured. ”

“ Can we honestly say that the increasing undress on stage or in daily life provokes more deep, true and sincere feeling, reveals more of a girl's or a woman's real and best [31] self? We know it does not. It distracts our thoughts from the woman herself to memories of purely animal and gross experience, tempts us to lower depths. It matters not, in the book or in the play, that innocence prevail. ”

“ There are few prophets in the world, few sublimely beautiful women, few heroes. I can’t afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my everyday fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common labourer, who gets his own bread, and eats it vulgarly but creditably with his own pocket-knife. ”

“ Bid us look for, welcome, and artificially develop every first faint stirring of the sex-urge, and you make us slaves indeed. If you consider less fundamental desires and pleasures of the body, you will admit at once that feverish, uncontrolled, and constant straining to put out all your strength at once, can produce no kind of good sportsman. Who more rigorously disciplines himself than the athlete? The power to be passionate, to express the love of the flesh, dies before it has ever been really attained, for those who always at once yield to mere craving. ”

“ It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings; which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous, homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. ”