Neith Boyce

“ This is, no doubt, sound advice; but has not the critic made a mistake in saying that woman's forte lies in the delineation of character? Are not most great critics agreed that to delineate character, even domestic virtues and faults, is the office of the highest type of novel, while the novel of incident, of fight and fury, is of a distinctly inferior sort? There is some illogicality here. Woman seems to be getting some credit that does not belong to her. ”

“ Woman never has liked the Tom Jones type of hero—the conquering, destroying, self-indulgent young animal. She likes splendour and dash, but still demands that the hero shall represent somehow the idea of self-sacrifice, of mortification of the flesh, and, above all, of constancy. It was Thackeray, again, who said that woman would forgive Nero all his other sins if only he had been a good family man. ”

“ Women, Tolstoy explains, besides their lack of moral qualities, are also mentally deficient. They "cling to old absurdities." It cannot be denied that they do—romance, for example. It must be admitted, too, that they will not sacrifice their own ideas of what makes an interesting story or a proper hero. Self-sacrificing man writes to please them. Hence, woman drags the novel down. ”

“ Howells said that women, especially with us, are the "repository of such refinement as we have attained," but also that "their tastes and manners have been coarsened by sharing the rude sports and boyish games of men." ”

“ Let the men attend to the novel of fight and fury, and the women to the delineation of domestic virtues and faults. We shall get a sounder literature thus than we shall if the women attempt to enter into the fighting nature of man, which they never understand and for which they have no sympathy. ”

“ Indeed, in France, where the young person was never terrifying, the novel has been debased all the same by the influence of woman, who, educated, intelligent and married, is all the more pernicious. Count Tolstoy points out the damnatory evidence in contemporary French literature that "in France everything centres in women, and women have complete control of life;" ”

“ However, women are not as bad as their influence; very few of them, probably, really enjoy athletics as much as they pretend, Mr. Howells thought, and very few probably are fond of novels of adventure. ”